Drawing Board

Our wedding date is fast approaching, so in January we sat down to work on an save-the-date card. And proceeded to draw a great big blank. We tried drawing inspiration from various sources. Art Deco ironwork. Edward Gorey. Mexican sugar skulls. Nothing seemed to be working.

And then Dorothy made an offhand joke about Big Barda, which somehow lead us to this...

Fantastic Four Annual #3, p. 1

It's the comic book wedding to end all comic book weddings, right? So why not use this as the inspiration for our save-the-date card?

These are the initial sketches I presented to Dorothy after we'd decided on this approach. I had a feeling we wouldn't wind up straying too far away from Kirby's initial design but wanted to present some variants just in case. I kind of like blustering, overdramatic Doom (second from the left) myself. There's just something classic about that pose.

Didn't matter. We kept coming back to that original splash page.

Here's the second round of sketches, based off of the designs Dorothy marked with a star above. You can see some of the other designs are losing a bit of energy as they become more concrete. And, if you can read my chicken scratch you might notice that Doom's dialogue is actually based on his diatribe from the second page of Fantastic Four Annual #3.

Anyway, it's clear that the original idea is the clear winner. I'm not going to show you the fourth round of sketches, since all I was doing was figuring out the finer points of the placement of the newspaper. We wanted to lower it far enough to show more of Doom's face than in the original splash page, but not low enough that one could see the big-ass medallions holding his cloak in place.

Here's the final pencils, side-by-side with the inked and colored version. I used Photoshop to drop in the newspaper text, and used Manga Studio to generate the starburst and the halftone patterns for Doom's armor. Yes, I suppose I could have dug up my crowquill from the basement and worked up my own starburst but I was feeling lazy. And I tend to make a huge mess whenever I do that. To get the darker gray I trapped the shaded areas you see on the pencil sketch and used that as a mask for the heavier tone. There's also some tonee on Doom's cloak to make it darker than the starburst.

Unfortunately, when I went down to Commonwealth Press to get these printed we discovered that the halftone screens I was using were way too fine to reproduce well. (I had used 75 lpi screens, and they prefer 30 lpi screens.) We noodled around with the Photoshop files for a bit trying to see if we could make them work, and eventually decided to make the lighter gray a separate color. That wound up bumping up the price but hey, you only get married once.

There you go. The coolest save-the-date card in the world.

Well, unless Doctor Doom really does crash the reception with his emotion charger. Then things will get awkward.

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Fus Ro Da

Written by Cullen Bunn
Illustrated by Will Sliney
Colored by Veronica Gandini
Lettered by Clayton Cowles

Somewhere in the Marvel universe, someone is plotting something eeeeevil involving some ancient Norse zombies that look like they walked right out of Skyrim. And it's up to Misty Knight and the Valkyrie to stop it...

I had passed on this the first time I saw it at the comic shop. But Valkyrie was actually one of my favorite Marvel characters when I was a kid, and this got a positive review from my buddy Dan, so I grabbed a copy on my next trip. I'm not so sure it was worth it.

Obviously this is the first part of a "getting the bad together" story, but it's painfully slow. At the end of the issue we've had two big fight scenes but still only have two heroes on the team, and the bad guy doesn't have a name or a plan or a motivation. It's all mildly diverting but there's not really anything here that would get me to return for a second issue.

And the art is only mediocre.

The Fearless Defenders #1, p. 17

I can see that Will Sliney is trying to capture sort of crazy, crude Kirbyesque energy with his drawings and panel compositions. But his approach is far too grounded and realistic to pull it off.

Just look at that lower left panel of Valkyrie bashing a draugr's head in with an axe. The perspective is totally off. Someone who approached this with a more geometric, abstract approach like Tom Scioli could totally pull this crazy camera angle and its inherent inconsistencies and make everything seem action-packed. But because everything seems far too grounded the characters just seem (unintentionally) distorted and we become painfully aware that the perspective just doesn't work.

Then, in the next panel the foreshortening isn't extreme enough, to the point where everything is obviously distorted but in a way that doesn't lend the panel any more depth or action. It's just a really weird choice.

I also find the change to Valkyrie's costume baffling. I can understand the idea behind modifying her toropedo tits bustier, which is a dated look. And i can even undestand the idea of adding more decorative mdeallions in an attempt to mimic Thor's design and tie the two characters more closely together. But giving them that much depth is just... unsettling. It's like she has a pair of backup mini-breasts. Or dugs. Not flattering. And removing every other aspect of her column, like the distinctive belt buckle, just makes her a generic girl in blue spandex.

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Hero or Menace?

Written by Dan Slott
Illustrated by Ryan Stegman
Colored by Edgar Delgado
Lettered by Chris Eliopoulos

Spider-Man is dead.

Not dead dead, of course. But in Amazing Spider-Man #700, Doctor Octopus and Spider-Man swapped minds, shortly before Doc Ock's body died of massive organ failure. In his final moments, though, Spider-Man was able to use their shared mental connection to instill in Doctor Octopus an important lesson: with great power comes great responsibility.

So what we have here is pretty simple: Doctor Octopus has taken over Spider-Man's body, but he's still committed to being a hero. Except of course, he's going to do it his way. Sometimes, this means fighting crime in clever ways that Peter Parker would never even consider. And sometimes this means taking all sorts of ethical shortcuts that remind us why Peter Parker is a hero and Otto Octavius is a villain.

For instance: injecting villains with some nano-scale spider tracers so he can eavesdrop on them is fairly clever. Using this information to set up a trap? Also fairly clever. Setting that trap in a public area in a way that needlessly puts civilians at risk? Now that's just callous indifference.

Fortunately the minty-fresh ghost of Peter Parker is still lurking in the back of Octavius's mind, providing the occasional piece of ethical advice and vainly trying to reassert his conrol over his body. Because you all knew he was never really dead all along.

A unique premise? Hardly. I've seen at least half a dozen "someone tries to replace Spider-Man" stories in my lifetime. The sheer length of this one should at least allow Dan slott to explore what it really means to be Spider-Man in more depth, though.

The Superior Spider-Man #2, p. 3 (detail)

The first arc on Superior Spider-Man is illustrated by Ryan Stegman, and he doesn't quite work for me. His work is a bit too scratchy and angular, to the point where figures sometimes seem lumpy or over-rendered. It's not bad, per se, but it doesn't always seem to capture the right tone. He's able to capture he scenes that are meant to be horrific or grotesque, but comedy seems to fail him. Look at that scene above — Carlie's hamster cheeks just look grotesque, and the pacing feels off. Hopefully future arcs will have better art.

Separated at Birth?

They've been doing some interesting work with Spider-Man's body language to convey the change-over. His hair is slicked back, his smiles a bit too wide, his body movements a unnatural and stilted. It's effective, but I can't help thinking I've seen those mannerisms somewhere before...

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Fist Against Bone

Written by Kathryn Immonen
Illustrated by Valerio Schiti
Colored by Jordie Bellaire
Lettered by Clayton Cowles

The Lady Sif, seeking an edge in battle, visits the sorceress Aerndis to learn the secrets of the berserkers. Power comes with a prince, though — Sif becomes mightier, but also dangerous and unstable. When her rage becomes unontrollable, Heimdall is forced to step in and banish her to a dimenson where the last of the berserkers are locked in eternal battle with monsters that might have been. Unfortunately, in doing so he has inadvertently given those monsters a pathway back to the real world...

Somehow I missed the first issue of this storyline, but I didn't realize it until I was reading the letters page of Journey Into Mystery #648. It's a testament to Kathryn Immonen's writing that I had no problem jumping into the middle of a story and immediately grasping what was going on.

This is almost everything I'm looking for in a superhero comic. It's got an easy-to-understand story, one or two ongoing subplots, big fights, jokes, and character dynamics that add some spice to some well-worn story beats. Heck, Immonen even manages to work in a Spider-Man guest shot in such a way that I'm actually excited to see what will happen instead of just rolling my eyes.

Is this a comic for the ages? Probably not. But it's damn entertaining and sometimes that's all you need.

All of the Marvel NOW! books I've picked up seem to have the same feel — detailed artwork, technical-pen style inking, maybe a bit too stiff for its own good, with simpler coloring than usual. Valerio Schiti seems to be working comfortably in this new house style, but has some excellent storytelling chops that make this book a treasure to read.

Journey Into Mystery #648, p. 3

I love the slashing rhythm created by Sif's sword, mimicked by the panel structure. Left, right, left; down, up, down, up, pause, up, down; left, right. It really helps convey the unrelenting savagery of her assault, and even the pause in the middle has great comic timing. Sif is actually doing something in each panel.

Even the colors help out. Sif's red-and-black color scheme starts to blur with the monster's orange-and-blue, to the point where it's hard to tell which one is the monster and which one is the hero. Subtle.

The only thing I don't like? The manga-style radiating speed lines, which aren't inked heavily enough to convey any energy and wind up getting lost in the shuffle as a result. Besides, if you're going to add that touch to a Thor book, Sinnot-style crowquill starbursts are what's called for.

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Fantastic for Four Minutes

Written by Matt Fraction
Illustrated by Michael Allred
Colored by Laura Allred
Lettered by Clayton Cowles

So. The Fantastic Four have discovered that they have some sort of cosmic cancer, and they have to travel outside the space-time continuum to find a cure. It's a trip that should only take a few minutes, Earth-time, but just in case something goes wrong they decide to recruit some replacements to take care of the Future Foundation while they're gone. Because something always goes wrong.

Mister Fantastic, a brilliant scientist who has trouble expressing himself, recruits Ant-Man, a brilliant scientist who has trouble expressing himself (and a former member of the Fantastic Four).

The Invisible Woman, a concerned mother with an emotionally distant husband, recruits Medusa, a concerned mother with an emotionally distant husband (and former a member of the Fantastic Four).

The Thing, a rock-solid friend you can always depend on, recruits She-Hulk, a rock-solid friend you can always depend on (and a former member of the Fantastic Four).

The Human Torch, who is impulsive and a bit immature, puts it off to the last second and recruit Darla Deering, the pop star he's dating who is impulsive and a bit immature (and not a former member of the Fantastic Four).

So, predictably, something goes very wrong. The "real" Fantastic Four wind up stranded outside space and time, and their replacements find themselves a bit overwhelmed. The media doesn't like them. Everyone suddenly chooses this moment to remember that Ant-Man used to be a crook. Medusa has some trouble adapting to the less-than-regal lifestyle. She-Hulk is being stalked by creepy Moloids. And Darla, a relatively normal person thrust into the crazy world of superscience and superheroics, runs screaming from her new responsibilities back to the relatively sane world of pop superstardom.

And then the Human Torch1 falls out of a hole in the sky, years older, missing several body parts, and certifiably insane.

Let the fun begin.

Matt Fraction has picked a really clever way to update the Fantastic Four. By replacing the team with four characters who are similar (but not identical) to the originals he can maintain the core dynamic while still pushing the book in new directions that might not have been possible previously. You can't do a story about bickering and inexperience with a FF that has been working together for decades. These characters are free to make mistakes and surprise you without seeming out of character. And because they're not first-stringers real change seems possible.

And of course there's the beautiful art from Mike Allred.

FF (2012) #2, p. 17-19

Just look at this lovely (if someowhat spoileriffic) sequence from FF #2. I love the way Allred is using crazy diagonal panel borders and off-angle staging to make everything seem disoriented and chaotic, while using the hard edges of the Baxter Building and the sweeping curves of the floor panels and radiang energy to sweep the eye from panel to panel. I really love how he uses more conventional structure of the three inset panels to establish that they're taking place in a different frame of reference. And his design for the flamed-on Human Torch does a great job of combining modern and classic looks for the character.

(The only thing I don't like? The way people's feet line up with the panel border at the top of page 18. It's such an amateurish tangent that it makes things feel staged.)

FF (2012) #3, p. 20 (detail)

Allred is also a master of subtle expressions. Subtle touches, like the tilt of Medusa's head as she thinks wistfully about her husband, the She-Hulk blowing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes, or an evil gleam in the Human Torch's eyes, really bring the characters to life and remind you why showing is better than telling.

My only complaint? The book is a bit disjointed, though that's probably deliberate. I'm sure as the cahracters get a grip on what they're doing things will settle into a groove. I'm definitely in for the long haul.

Okay, it's pretty clear this guy is probably not the real Human Torch. He could be a version of him from an alternate future, but I'm betting he's actually Vangaard. The dude got several body parts blown off in 'Nam, exists outside of space and time, and has a mad-on for wiping things from existence.

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Not the hero we want, the scumbag we need

Written by Gerry Duggan and Brian Posehn
Illustrated by Tony Moore
Colored by Val Staples
Lettered by Joe Sabino

A rogue SHIELD agent has decided that America needs to be saved from itself. And who better to steer America back to the golden days of yesteryear than the men who helmed the country in those days? Alas, magic is unpredictable, and the Necromancer's army of Zombie Presidents are reborn as twisted, soulless mockeries of their former selves. And they've decided that the problem with America is... Americans. Time to kill them all. Sounds like a job for Captain America!

Except, of course, that Captain America can't exactly be seen going around decapitating Zombie Truman with his shield. It looks terrible and it sends mixed messages. What SHIELD needs is someone the general public hates, who can get the job done anyway.

Enter — Deadpool!

I was going to say my main problem with Gerry Duggan and Brian Posehn's Deadpool was that it isn't very funny, but that's not right. It's actually quite funny. The problem is that it doesn't feel like it was written for a comic book. The odd pacing, the jokes that fall flat on the page (but seem funny when you read them out loud in a silly voice), the low joke density — this feels like an episode of an Archer-style cartoon that never made it past the storyboard stage. And if this were a cartoon I'd probably be laughing my ass off. But as a comic it all feels a bit flat.

Tony Moore's art does not help, either. He's an excellent draftsman, a competent storyteller, and he certainly seems like your first choice to illustrate a story about zombie ex-Presidents. But he doesn't seem capable of creating the sort of madcap energy a story like this needs.

Deadpool (2012) #2, p. 12 (detail)

This is a sequence where Deadpool loudly sneaks up on Zombie Teddy Roosevelt and blows his brains out at point blank range. It's practically screaming for some crazy, Looney-Tunes-meets-Grand-Guignol imagery. So why does it look like all Deadpool is doing is shooting Teddy's hat off?

And everything is like this. Everything from Washington raising an army of Civil War soldiers to Gerald Ford tripping and falling into a helicopter's blade is delineated in such a prosaic way that it loses any comedic impact it might have had.

And don't get me started on the Presidents.

It doesn't have to be said that the average American knows virtually nothing about American history. As far as we're concerned any 19th century president who isn't named "Lincoln" or "Grant" is basically a cipher, and most of the 20th century ones are equally forgettable. Maybe if you pressed us we'd be able to tell you that Ford was clumsy and Taft was really fat and Madison's wife was stacked and made cupcakes.

I mean, geez, Andrew Jackson nearly beat a would-be assassin to death with his walking stick. The man at least deserves his own death panel and not share one with Martin Van Buren.

There are a zillion jokes you could make about American presidents, so why bring them all back if you're just going to focus on the big names? It just seems like a wasted opportunity. But then, so does the rest of Deadpool.

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"Castaway in Dimension Z"

Written by Rick Remender
Penciled by John Romita Jr.
Inked by Klaus Janson
Colors by Dean White
Letters by Joe Caramagna

The marketing sold me on this comic by mentioning two things — Arnim Zola and John Romita, Jr. And boy, it certainly has both of those things.

Rick Rememnder is certainly committed to an action-filled book. We open with Captain America tackling a group of super-powered eco-terrorists over the skies of New York, and there's only a three page breather filled with sexual banter before he sends Cap rocketing through a secret subway into an alternate dimension populated entirely by Arnim Zola and his bio-freaks. And yet for a book that aspires to be a non-stop thrill ride there are surprisingly few thrills. The narration makes the opening action sequence feel perfunctory, as if Cap just isn't into it despite the millions of lives on the line. His later rampage through Dimension Z feels like a set piece that was too precious to be abandoned, a placeholder for a fast-paced plane chase that just couldn't be translated to the printed page successfully. If this is a preview of coming attractions, there's nothing here that's going to convince me to pick up the second issue unless I was a huge fan of Captain America or Arnim Zola. Or John Romita, Jr.

And speaking of John Romita Jr., isn't it a little odd that in the last twenty years no one at Marvel has been able to figure out that their in-house coloring style just doesn't work over his pencils?

Captain America (2013) #1, p. 16 (detail)

I mean, just look at that. It just doesn't look right. White's subtle tonalities and painterly touches just don't work well with Romita's underlying bold, abstract forms. The end result is the grotesque addition of three dimensions introducing on flat forms that are being rendered in a visual shorthand that should be defying precise dimensions. Just look at Cap's chest and right arm. They look tortured, and they don't have to.

(Also, the blown-out highlights are weird. They feel like something from an early Image comic. There's They do a good job of leading your eye around the page but there's still just way too much contrast and they start to draw attention to themself, which is a big no-no.)

(And the coloring job totally ruins the little motion lines around Cap's hands! Here they just become weird little details on his restraints and Zola's loincloth.)

It also doesn't help that JRjr seems to have lost a few steps in the last few years. Too often in this book figures seem to have been scribbled out without an attempt to figure out their underlying anatomy, and layouts chosen for ease of rendering rather than maximum dramatic impact. It's an approach that he's used well in the past, cand it can be thrilling when done with enthusiasm and energy. But these days it can feel like he's working just to work, like his heart doesn't seem to be in it.

I'll take his mid-'90s Spider-Man work over this any day.

Oh, and does anyone know what the little AR symbol in the lower left-hand corner of the panel is? It's all over the cover and the inside but I've got no idea what it means. I suspect it's something from the digital version of the comic that should have been left off the printed version but I don't do digital so I'm not sure.

The AR is for the Marvel AR app. It brings more content related to that panel. I think it requires a smartphone, and in this panel (as an example only!) the AR could be something like, a little video from the artist talking through the process of this panel's creation, or even some in-universe information. Like the issue with Dupe in Wolverine and the X-Men, the AR app translated Dupe-speak and on your phone you could see what he was saying. I think in this panel it'd be cool of the AR app showed the actual scientific process that Arnim Zola was using on Cap. I don't read Marvel and don't have the app, but I've seen people use it and it's got a lot of potential. I just prefer DC so there's no first hand experience I Can speak of.

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Double Feature

If you like superheroes and movies, it's undoubtedly a good time to be alive.
Since the turn of the century we've had five X-men movies, four Spider-Man movies, three Batman movies, six Avengers movies, and more. Heck, even Ghost Rider and Hellboy got in on the act. So why do most of these films leave me cold? My friends had to drag me to the theater to see Batman Begins and Spider-Man 2, and I still haven't bothered to see X-Men: The Last Stand, half of the Avengers films or any DC movie that doesn't have Batman in it.

In part, I'm just tired of these franchises in way that the general movie-going public is not. When you read superhero comics all the time the movies somehow seem less special, because you've never taken a break from the characters. Then again, the movie-going public doesn't exactly have the insatiable desire for the characters that it takes to drive the sales of a monthly comic, either. Even so, you'd figure that a guy with several hundred Spider-Man comics in his possession would eventually want to see The Amazing Spider-Man. But no.

Could it be because most of these movies aren't any good?

And before anyone jumps on me, no, I'm not saying these movies are bad.1 What I am saying is that they're not good. They may be perfectly fine disposable entertainment, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll stand the test of time. (There's a reason that we still watch Goldfinger but not For Your Eyes Only.) It is, of course, possible to be both financially and critically successful. But it's rare.2

And once the adrenaline rush has worn off, there's really not much in most superhero movies that merits a second thought.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Starring American Psycho, Star Trek: Nemesis, and Les Miserables

Batman is of course a famously adaptable character. Over the course of his lifetime he's been the avatar of both high camp and grim'n'gritty storytelling. He can be a child's fantasy, the world's greatest detective, a scientific genius, a stoic action hero, an mentally-unbalanced vigilante, a brooding loner, a gadabout playboy, a member of the Justice League — or any combination of the above you can think of.

So at first glance Batman seems the ideal vehicle for Christopher Nolan to explore ideas about heroism, terrorism, and the security state. There's only one problem.

He's Batman.

Nolan's movies posit a world where our existing institutions are basically utterly defenseless against terrorism. The police, the army, and the courts are powerless and unable to act against the Ra's al Ghul, the Joker, and Bane. Only one man, acting above the law, can do what must be done.

Except Batman isn't real. You can scour the world and won't be able to find someone so civic-minded, indomitable, incorruptible, possessed of infinite ability and unlimited resources. He is a fantasy. The Nolan movies basically ask us to put our faith in great men and trust that any extraordinary actions they are taking are ultimately for our benefit. Anyone who might object to this is either handwaved away, superficially mollified, or evil.

Likewise, the threats Batman faces are specifically constructed to be threats only Batman can defeat. Real world terrorism is rarely so convenient or easily foiled. You can't make economic inequality and widespread class-based unrest go away by punching Thomas Hardy in the face. If Batman is a fantasy, then the problems he tries to solve are equally fantastic — a child's understanding of terrorism and international geopolitics.

These strike me as very dangerous fantasies. The sort that leads to warrentless wiretapping, intelligence overreach, drone strikes, and years and years of unwinnable, illegal wars. Except for some reason here I'm supposed to cheer it.

Let's give credit where credit is due, though. Even if I think his themes are wrong-headed at best, at least Nolan has themes and is actively trying to explore them. On the other side of the spectrum...

The Avengers (2012)

Had some trouble with that, didn't you? It's because at its core The Avengers is about Loki opening up a magic sky anus and taking over the world with Wesley Wyndam-Pryce and his army of space weevils. Oh, to be sure, Joss Whedon wheels out some hoary old clichés about learning to put aside but don't be fooled. It's all about the sky anus and the space weevils.3

And all of Marvel's lastest movies are like this — all surface, no depth. You can't ask yourself what Iron Man 2 or Captain America or Thor are really about, because they are not about anything more complicated than men in funny tights punching bad men in the face. At least the surface is admittedly pretty and fun to watch, filled with inventive eye candy and the occasional fine performance from the likes of Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Tom Hiddleston. I always leave the theater with a smile on my face.

But that's just on the surface. I also never wind up leaving the theater with more than I brought in.

It's a credit to popular taste that when you take a look at inflation-adjusted gross receipts that the top films are actually pretty good. You actually have to scroll down to #43 (Airport) before you, "What, really?" and all the way down to #67 (Smokey and the Bandit) before you go "You have to be kidding me."

What is a roller coaster about? A hot fudge sundae? A perfect cup of coffee?

If there is a problem with modern movies, especially of the superhero variety I would say that far too many attempt to turn something that should be fun into something more meaningful.

A good superhero movie should not make you think (seriously Nolan, how could you blow it on the last movie?) too much. A GOOD superhero movie should be like your favorite rides at an amusement park, you know, the ones you want to go on, over and over again.

For me, the only time one of these movies falls flat is when the subject matter is taken too seriously. Or when it is obvious the people involved don't think it possible to mess up the story (Green Lantern) and get lazy.

So I would contend that the memory of a pleasant experience is enough of a take away, and that looking for lasting impact from a superhero movie is like asking a handful of cotton candy to color your pallet for weeks after the carnival has left town...

I think that's a perfectly valid way to appreciate movies, but I also don't think it's wrong to want more out of your entertainment. After all, a diet of pure sugar will eventually kill you. It doesn't even have to be much — Robocop is not an especially deep movie, but it has several thematic elements that reward watching it again and again.

I definitely agree with that. I just wonder if we are asking too much from these movies. I mean, not every movie can be of the caliber of something like Robocop in terms of pure film making. My main issue with most modern movies, of any genre is poor pacing. Going back to the roller coaster analogy, how fun would the laser loop have been if it sped you towards the loop, then slowed to a crawl as you started to go upside down then stalled with you at the top, all the blood rushing to your head? So many movies fall flat in this regard.

Another thing I see happening a lot, especially with superhero movies is a tendency to present the characters, in most cases that we have only just been introduced to, in a manner that expects us to give a crap about what is happening to them. Some films, even though they are pretty good, completely ignore the concept of time. Take Thor for example. Not a bad movie, but if you watch it and pay attention to time, the main conflict of the movie, the main issue for the protagonist, lasts a grand total of 48 hours. Kind of hard to feel anything for characters that had what essentially amounts to a bad weekend.

I think both Thor and Captain America were pretty rotten in that regard — they spent a lot of time coasting on existing perceptions of the characters and their history, instead of making a case as to why whe should care about them. Nolan's Batman movies stand a cut above the rest because they at least try to make a coherent case for Batman as a character.

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First, there's the sheer inadvisability of following up a year-long storyline about heroes possibly being replaced by evil version of themselves with another year-long storyline about heroes definitely being replaced by evil versions of themselves. Yes, it helps underscore how dire a situation Marvel's heroes have found themselves in, but it also risks boring the audience and also neutering the Skrulls and Thunderbolts by overexposing their central premises.

But the bigger problem is that "Dark Reign" has effectively neutered Marvel's supervillains. Think about it — what have the Dark Avengers done to distinguish themselves from their New and Mighty counterparts? They're still fighting (other) supervillains and saving the world week in and week out. Heck, in some ways, they're actually an improvement on their predecessors. I don't see Norman Osborn throwing American citizens into an extradimensional prison without a trial. At their worst, they seem utterly concerned about containing casualties in their battles, but they don't seem to be racking them up at an unreasonable rate either.

So if the Dark Avengers and the regular Avengers are functionally equivalent, do we really care that the fake Ms. Marvel is a manipulative slut, that Spider-Man has more pills in his system than Anna Nicole Smith, or that the fake Wolverine is a former murderer (albeit one who's killed a lot fewer people than his father)? If anything, their impure motivations make these characters more interesting to read about.

Marvel seems to have belatedly realized this and is allowing a little old school villainy to emerge outside of the core Dark Reign books — the fake Ms. Marvel, for instance, gets to be gloriously evil in her own title even if she's a team player over in Dark Avengers. They've also released several mini-series showcasing their villains at their absolute worst. I'd like to discuss two of those today.

Lethal Legion #1-3

Their very names make men tremble — The Grim Reaper! Nekra! The Absorbing Man! Mr. Hyde! Tiger Shark! The Grey Gargoyle! Wonder Man! Together they are the Lethal Legion!

If you are a long-time Marvel reader you've spotted a problem with this premise right away: none of these villains are terribly interesting. The Grim Reaper has a pointlessly convoluted history and is really only useful as a Wonder Man villain. Nekra has spent her entire career subordinated to either the Mandrill or the Reaper. The Absorbing Man has his moments but hasn't really been interesting since the Secret Wars. Tiger Shark and Mr. Hyde are bland, generic characters with no real motivations. The Grey Gargoyle's one shining moment was when Evan Dorkin had him break off his weiner when jerking off. And Wonder Man is a second-string hero who just isn't interesting enough to hold down his own book. Any writer trying to make these characters seem threatening has his work cut out for him.

Frank Tieri certainly gives it the old college try. His conceit is that all of these characters have been wronged by Norman Osborn and have decided that they're not going to be playing by his rules any longer. Their combined might allows them to cut a bloody swath across Manhattan, kidnap Osborn, and drive the Dark Avengers to their knees before they're stopped.

Here's the next problem: this all happenes off-screen. Lethal Legion #1 starts with the Legion behind bars, trying to figure out which one of them betrayed them to Osborn. We get occasional flashbacks to their mad rampage, but for the most part the Legion are presented as broken men prone to panic attacks and catatonic crying jags. We're constantly told these are some of the most dangerous criminals who've ever lived, but we don't actually see them doing anything particularly vile. Only Mateus Santolouco's art manages to make them seem even remotely threatening.

Lethal Legion #1, p. 19

Everything I love and hate about Santolouco's work is on display in this image. The Grim Reaper has a nice solidity to him, but he's placed on a background that's so detailed that he doesn't pop. The basic composition is simple and direct, but the execution is so haphazard that it doesn't control where your eye is being pulled across the page. The solidity of the underdrawing barely pokes through the sloppy, haphazard inking. Some of the nice tonal work in background is undercut by the choice of some chunky, distracting Photoshop brushes. And yet, there's an appealing energy just lurking below the surface — the Reaper's bugged-out eyes and hideous rictus manage to convey the menace that the rest of the picture only hints at. Santolouco clearly has some talent, and could be someone to watch if he can polish his compositional skills.

Here's the twist. It turns out the Lethal Legion was never a real threat — they're really a plot by Norman Orborn and the Grim Reaper to gather all the malcontented supervillains in one place so they can be crushed like a bug. Thematically, this is brilliant. Dramatically, it's a total misfire. You have to believe for a second that the Lethal Legion was an actual menace, and the story structure and ending completely undercut that. What you're left with is a story about losers being losers, with all of the action off-camera. Who wants to read that?

Zodiac #1-3

Written by Joe Casey
Illustrated by Nathan Fox
Colored by Jose Villarubia
Lettered by Albert Deschene

If you thought that the Lethal Legion was a group of losers and has-beens, wait until you see gang Zodiac has put together. The Clown? Manslaughter Marsdale? The Trapster? Whirlwind? At first glance, these jokers couldn't pose a threat to the Great Lakes Avengers. No, scratch that — they couldn't pose a threat to the X-Babies.

Here's what Joe Casey understands that Frank Tieri doesn't: actions speak louder than words. A ten-time loser suddenly becomes a lot more threatening if you actually see him shooting people in the face. A never-was can be terrifying if you're watching him torture an enemy to death. And while folks like the Trapster and the Whirlwind might never give the Avengers or Fantastic Four a run for their money, they can still be a terrifying menace street-level heroes and normal folks.

And the mysterious Zodiac who's put this entire crew together? He's literally a nobody, whose unmasking at the end of the first issue carries no dramtic impact. But when we first see him he's busy slaughtering 100 HAMMER agents, and over the course of the series he recruits a fanatically loyal villain army, beats the Human Torch into a coma, blows up a hospital, reduces lower Manhattan to rubble, and steals a weapon of mass destruction that has the potential to devastate the entire universe. On the cover of the third issue, we see him cavorting in a ruined skyscraper that deliberately mimics the ruins of the World Trade Center. He may be a nobody, but he's a nobody that you should be terrified of.

And this is what Zodiac remembers and Dark Reign and Lethal Legion seems to have forgotten. The villains don't have to win, but they do have to actually be villanous every once in a while. What's the point of pulling the wool over everyone's eyes if you don't get to indulge yourself? Why bother to seize power if you don't actually get to enjoy it? Why take over the system when you can be your own system?

Zodiac #2, p. 22

Nathan Fox's art is actually a large part of the book's appeal as well. Like Santolouco, he's got a lot of rough edges but a lot of energy and appeal that makes him worth watching. And like Santolouco, his primary weakness is in composition.

Fox's obvious influence would seem to be Paul Pope — especially in the looseness of his style and the haphazard way he strews details across his image. But Pope's work is deceptive, in that what seems to be random and loose is actually tightly subordinated to the overall composition. Fox doesn't seem to have grasped that yet, and the overproliferation of details on the page above makes it very hard to read even though its basic composition is very simple. The most effective part? The contrast between the very busy panel of Red Ronin wrecking New York and the very empty panel of Zodiac in his clean, crisp, suit.

Anyway, it's a great mini with good writing and art, filled with villains actually being villanous. It's probably the best thing to come out of Dark Reign. I can't wait to see more of these characters in the future. Even, God help me, the Clown.

Thing About My Baby, It Don't Matter If She's Black Or White

So, Nekra. Judging from her depiction in Lethal Legion (and the appearance of her "daughter" in Zodiac), there's no one at Marvel who remembers that she's an albino black woman and not a pale white chick. Which is amazing, because this is the only part of her origin that matters. Well, except for her parents being exposed to radiation. And teaming up with the Mandrill. But you know what I mean.

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So, I've been reading through War of Kings and one of the things that struck me is that their portray of Maximus is less Maximus the (Mwa-Ha-Ha) Mad and more Maximus the Mildly Manic. He's actually helpful, likeable, and it seems like no vestiges of his former personality remain outside of the occasional sarcastically snide remark. Can anyone tell me when Maximus got this personality transplant, or is it something new for War of Kings?

War of Kings #2, p. 11

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I think Maximus's bipolar megalomaniac shtick was one-dimensional and played out, and this portrayal does have some potential for him to slide back into villainy while still remaining a sympathetic and interesting character.

Less Human Than Human

While we're at it, let's talk about the Inhumans. They're a Marvel mainstay whose appeal I've never been able to understand. Individual characters like Crystal and Black Bolt have a lot of potential, but as a group they're utterly forgettable. Actually, let me change that. As a group they're utterly reprehensible.

They have a rigid caste system that devalues those with powers they don't deem useful. They either treat one of their own royal family like a dog, or think it's hilarious to make others believe that they do. That same royal family rules with an apathetic populace, even though their internicene power struggles have almost destroyed their society several times in the last decade. They genetically engineered their own slave caste, only decided to manumit them at the point of a gun, and their idea of "freedom" was to let their slaves do the same work they'd always done for free while they slowly went extinct. Every time they do come to Earth they stand in the corner like an obnoxious non-smoker, coughing and shooting us mean glances while they mutter about pollution under their breath. Their selling point appears to be that they're just another race of generic super-people, and as I've said before that's not an inherently interesting concept.

Yeah, these are wonderful characters. About the only thing I can say about them is that they've got some nice Kirby designs.

The only take on the Inhumans I've ever been able to stomach is Paul Jenkins's Inhumans series. Jenkins implicitly understood that the Inhumans are total bastards, and much of his series involved characters who have been pushed to the outskirts of society and who are trying to force their way back in. At the end of the day, though, even that wasn't enough to make me care about the Inhumans as characters.

Unfinished Business

I decided to stick with Eternals until the end of its initial storyline, despite being singularlyuninpressed by the first three issues. My mistake. Charles and Daniel Knauf continue to spin an Eternals story as pedestrian as it is predictable.

I don't know why it's so hard to grasp the fact that the Eternals are not interesting in and of themselves. On their own, they're just a generic group of super-people, without much in the way of personality and motivation, and the Knaufs don't seem inclined to provide either. If these were the only six issues of Eternals you'd ever read, you would have no idea who these characters are. There's not much that distinguishes Thena from Ikaris or Sersi other than the role dictated for them by the plot.

Consider Phastos. One of the major subplots of the first six issues is that the Antarctic Eternals are competing with the Vorozhekhian Eternals to find and awaken new Eternals. But it's never explained why the Eternals are hidden, or why we should prefer Thena and Ikaris to Druig. Thena spends several issues trying to reawaken Phastos, but we're never told who Phastos is, other than a guy with a big hammer. Worse, when he's finally awakened, he proves to be next to useless, unable to use his expertise to help his fellow Eternals out of the jam that they're in. In short, an awful lot of space is spent exploring a sub-plot that doesn't go anywhere.

In a more general sense, selling the Eternals as straight superheros is a losing proposition. Despite the current popularity of superhero movies, the general public really has no interest in straight-up superheroes — very few of them have ever really broken through to the mainstream.1 To sell a superhero you need to have a twist that makes the comic about more than about big beefo people beating the crap out of each other for no discernible reason — people can get that from any random issue of Youngblood from the mid-'90s, or from any other aspect of our culture for that matter. Eternals tries to hint at something more, at a forthcoming alien horde that may devour the planet, but is unable to sell that as just another alien invasion plot (and it's hard to get excited about another alien invasion in the wake of the one that the Marvel universe has just had).

Eternals #5, p. 17

Once again, I'm surprised with how quickly I've become bored with Daniel Acuña's art. In two years he hasn't bothered to show us anything new, and his flaws are now readily apparent. Consider the above page — it's got an appealing high-gloss look, but could it be any less energetic? I mean, a man is geting his back broken, but the storytelling is plodding, the composition uninspired, and the poses strangely devoid of any action. All the shiny textures in the world can't save this page from itself.

In short, Eternals is a total misfire of a series, bland and uninspiring, that tries to cover up its flaws with some shiny new paint. It's just not worth your time to check it out.

In order of conception: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, the Justice League, Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, Wolverine, and Spawn (maybe). Those are the superheroes that a random person on the street can name off the top of his head. Which isn't to say the general public hasn't heard of other heroes, but they'll be damned if they can tell you anything other than their names.

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Unfinished Business

Okay, it's time for me to clear up some unfinished business from last year. First up, a review of the final two issues of Mark Millar and Tommy Lee Edward's 1985.

Story by Mark Millar
Art by Tommy Lee Edwards
Lettered by John Workman

When we last left Toby, he'd ventured into the Marvel Universe to find the only people capable of saving his universe from a rampaging army of supervillains — the Marvel Superheroes. But what Toby doesn't realize is that he's only suppressing the symptoms, and while he's off recruiting the Avengers and the Fantastic Four his father tries to cure the disease by placating poor, brain-damaged Clyde Wyncham. Will he succeed, or will the Marvel Universe wind up destroying the real world?

Obviously, the answer is no. And that does rob the issue of a lot of its dramatic power — there's never really any sense that anything is at stake, that the world is ever really in danger of being destroyed or that the victims of the supervillain rampage are anything more than meaningless cannon fodder.

Maybe, then, there's some compelling character development. Nope. Clyde Wyncham is a brain-damaged weirdo at the beginning of the series, and is still a brain-damaged weirdo at the end of the series. Toby doesn't really seem to learn anything from the experience — maybe he learns to admire his biological father more than fictional heroes, but he never really seemed to have any conflicts with his father in the first place. And while we're told that we'll eventually be surprised by what Toby's dad can do, that turns out to be scraping together an ounce of courage, driving an ice cream truck through a war zone, and delivering some comics to a drooling vegetable. Admirably heroic, but not exactly compelling reading.

How about thematically? Well, I'm not sure there are any themes that are explored in depth. The comic doesn't have much to say about 1985 as a turning point for the Marvel Universe or comics in general. It doesn't have much to say about the intersection of comics and reality. Is the point maybe that Toby ultimately chooses reality over comics? Maybe, but he's never really shown disconnecting from reality in a meaningful way, and ultimately he winds up dropping out of college to write comic books. The one thing that I really take away from 1985 is that the true villain is an over-entitled fanboy who's throwing a hissy fit because his old comics have been taken away, not realizing that he's helping to destroy the one thing that's sustained him for years. Which isn't exactly a novel sentiment anymore, and one that's hard to take from Mark Millar.

In short, this is really just a gimmicky origin for the underwhelming character of Clyde Wyncham. Unless you're a Marvel zombie there's not really any reason to pick it up.

Well, except maybe for Tommy Lee Edwards's art. Then again, that's a bit problematic too. At the end of issue #4, Toby had jumped to the Marvel Universe and I was worried that he hadn't done enough to differentiate it from the "real world." Were my fears unjustified?

1985 #5, p. 2

If you compare this to Edwards's artwork from previous issues you can easily see the tricks he's using to distinguish the Marvel Universe from the "real world": the Marvel Universe sequences have a slightly cartoonier style; executed purely with linework and no hatching; a brighter, washed-out color palette; and larger gutters and page borders. But it isn't different enough — the underdrawing and the general approach to the coloring are still the same, and so the transition isn't jarring enough.1

This whole sequence would have had more "oomph" if they'd gone with Millar's original plan of having the real world characters and environments done up as photo comics, while the. On the other hand, I can't imagine that approach ever being cost-effective, even if they were using something similar to the "Rotoshopping" technique from Waking Life. Sure, digital photography makes it a lot cheaper than it used to be, but you're still talking about incurring expenses — hiring actors, digging up period clothes and props, building or renting sets. Possible, but unless this comic starts selling Secret Wars quantities it'd be hard for Marvel to recoup their costs. It'd be signficantly cheaper to just have a cartoonist draw the whole thing from his imagination.

I'm not sure how you'd salvage these sequences, though. You could have someone like Marie Severin do the coloring and separations 1985-style, with big ol' Benday Dots and seriously limited palette, but that would clash with Edwards' linework. You could turn them over to an old bullpen hand like Al Milgrom or Sal Buscema or even John Byrne, but that approach is practically clichéd. these days.

This major failing aside, though, Edwards' art is still gorgeous to look at — striking in its holistic approach, remarkable in the way that he suggests the inner life of his characters, and quite unlike anything else Marvel is putting out. If nothing else, 1985 has reminded me that he's an artist worth watching in the future, and that alone makes it a mild success.

Another nitpick specific to this image: none of the background characters in this image are acting properly. First off, they're not actually "reacting" as much as they are "posing" — perhaps understandable if they were rubbernecking at an accident but Toby just fell out of the sky not thirty seconds ago. And second, their sightlines are all off - they're not looking at Toby or the Trapster, but at a point about twenty feet in front of Toby (like, say, a camera). They're very well drawn and surprisingly individualized, but they're not really selling the reality of this panel at all.

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After three issues, it's pretty obvious that this Eternals series isn't for me.

The Knaufs continue to build their series around the Eternals, without bothering to give most of them anything resembling character or actual motivation. New characters are introduced but not explained, and then shuffled off to the sidelines. The Celestials aren't mysterious, unknowable space gods — they just don't deign to explain themselves. The Dreaming Celestial isn't some sinister judge — he's downright chatty and surprisingly helpful. The mysterious workings of universe appear to be simple power games straight out of Lensman, with the Celestials serving as Arisians and the Horde as Eddorians.

I would have dropped this series after issue #2 if it weren't for the art of Daniel Acuña.

Eternals (2008) #2, p. 7

As Makkari says, that's just beautiful. And yet, I'm still not satisfied, because his Celestials look too organic, too symmetrical and smooth. They're not jarring presences whose very existence throws your thought processes into disorder.

But I don't want to waste too much time on Eternals, because it's counterproductive. Marvel doesn't share my vision of what the concept is about, and probably never will, because it's not a marketable and they can't tie it to their existing superhero properties. I think their current take is shortsighted, and actively harms the characters and their mythology, but it's not my call to make. I've got a zillion other entertainment options and it's stupid to waste time working myself into a lather over this one when I could be enjoying something else.

Instead, I'll just say this. This series is sort of predictable, and completely impenetrable to anyone not already steeped in the lore of Eternals. And honestly, that's all you need to know.

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Still preoccupied with...

Story by Mark Millar
Art by Tommy Lee Edwards
Lettered by John Workman

When we last looked in on Toby, he had just discovered that the creepy old Wyncham house in his neighborhood had been taken over by Marvel supervillains. Unfortunately, his friends and neighbors didn't believe him — though they'll probably have to change that opinion now that the villains have started slaughtering the townsfolk en masse. So Toby breaks into the Wyncham house to find help in the only place he can think of — the Marvel Universe.

Though issue #1 showed a lot of promise, issues #2-4 are pretty blah stuff. They're just very poorly placed — filled with supervillains causing mass carnage for no apparent reason, killing townfolk you have no emotional attachment to, and being thwarted by some stock characters you have no real reason to root for. A misfire on just about every level. At least it's finally apparent why this series is set in 1985 — it's the period where comics started experimenting with "gritty realism." I'm guessing the lesson Millar wants us to take from 1985 is that mixing the real world with your comics destroys them — that it leads to a world where the Blob eats soldiers while Sauron pecks their eyes, a world that's inappropriate for children and that any sane adult wouldn't waste his time on. Which is certainly a valid point of view but it's sort of funny to have it conveyed by Mark "I was sodomized by a Captain America pastiche" Millar.

And, as I mentioned before, it's not even competently plotted. There's no real characterization or depth, and there's only one mystery worth exploring — who is repsonsible for dragging Marvel characters into the real world? Toby is probably out. If he were the "master" of these villains they'd beating up his step-father and his teachers instead of random strangers. The Toby narrating the story clearly wants you to believe that the culprit is his father — he even refers to him as "the first mutant this world has ever known" and inserts an flashback that seems to back up this point of view. But this seems a bit too obvious — and that flashback is really ambiguous. If Toby's dad could subconsciously lash out at the people who've hurt him, he would have probably started a lot sooner, and it's not clear why he'd be subconsciously lashing out at everyone in town either. No, the #1 suspect is undoubtedly poor, brain-damaged Clyde Wyncham. The first people killed are his nurse and her boyfriend. In a flashback, his dead father is resurrected — why would Toby's dad resurrect Clyde's father? No, whatever fried Clyde's brain in the first place has undoubtedly stopped him from controlling his raging powers and things are finally hitting the boiling point.

Stilt Man wandering through a half-lit, shadowy suburban environment has never looked so beautiful. Edward walks a deft tightrope here — Stilt Man is as carefully delineated as everything else on the page, yet retains aan otherworldly feel — there's still the potential that he's some fleeting phantasm, a beautiful fantasy for children rather than a murderous psychopath. The coloring is especially fantastic, evoking the hazy, muted colors of sunst in a way that you rarely see in a Marvel comic.

So it's a pity that Edwards may not turn out to be the right artist for this project at all.

Don't get me wrong. I like his depictions of the real world, and his depictions of the fantasy world are both wonderful and frightening at the same time. But the real problem is the sequence at the end of issue #4, where Toby wanders into the Marvel Universe. There's an attempt to make the MU look different from the regular world by cutting down on the hatching and shadowing, and using a sunnier palette. But the attempt fails because Edwards doesn't go far enough — the MU looks too much like his regular style and not enough like a fantasy.

But heck, his work in issue #5 and 6 could easily prove me wrong. And what he's put down here is certainly strong enough for me to give those issues a shot.

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Written by Greg Pak
Illustrated by Ron Garney
Colored by Paul Mounts
Lettered by

People were raving about Skaar, Son of Hulk last week, so I figured I'd give it a try. I'm not sure what the fuss was about — it's a pleasant enough read, but I won't be dumping my back issues of Conan to make room for Skaar any time soon. There's really nothing in the story and art to carp on.

No, what I want to carp on are the lousy sound effects. Here are some of sound effects sprinkled liberally throughout the first issue.

A planet being torn asunder.

The approach of a great horde.

A dragon breathing fire.

These sound effects all have one thing in common — they're boring. I blame computers.

I understand the appeal of computer lettering from a production standpoint. As someone who hand lettered a comic strip every day for four years, I know old-school lettering can be hand-cramping drudgery. A well-tuned font can make lettering so easy that a trained monkey could knock out a 22-page issue every day. It allows editors and writers to make changes right up to the moment the files go off to the printer. The average comic reader can't tell the difference between computer lettering and hand lettering, and usually doesn't care even if he can). Sure, you lose out on some of the idiosyncratic possibilities of hand lettering, but then superhero comics have rarely made use of those possibilities to begin with.

So no, I don't have anything against computer lettering per se. My problem is that computer lettering encourages you to take shortcuts everywhere. Especially with sound effects.

Sound effects aren't dialogue or captions — they shouldn't be regular and repeatable, or they become lifeless. When every "snikt" is the same they just become visual clutter, something to ignore, and when prepackaged effects are used they're frequently inappropriate. In the above examples, the letterforms in "Krakooom!" are just way too thin to convey the agony of a planet being reduced to rubble. The rough edges and the baseline shift in "Rrrruuuummmblleee" is just too regular to convey the violent approach of an army. And there's nothing that makes "Hrraaaaaa!" particularly fiery or load except for its size.

Sound effects really should be treated as part of the art — and the artists and letterers who use them well actually do. Walt Simonson clearly designs his pages with sound effects in mind, as do Erik Larsen, Adam Warren, and a whole host of talented manga artists. Sure, it takes a bit more time and effort, but the results are an order of magnitude more exciting. And isn't excitement what superhero comics are all about?

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The new Knauf/Acuña Eternals series picks up where the Gaiman/Romita miniseries left off, with the recently awakened Eternals preparing for the imminent arrival of the sinister Horde. In the intervening months, they seem to have settled into a predictable pattern. Makkari gets visions of depowered Eternals from the Dreaming Celestial, and Ikaris and Thena rush to recruit them to their side before the sinister Druig can enslave them to his. In short, it's Transformers: Armada with Eternals instead of Mini-Cons and the Horde in place of Unicron.

This is a perfectly logical follow-up to the Gaiman/Romita series, if a bit lacking. At the moment, it's microfocused on the Eternals rather than some sort of grand cosmic conflict — and we're once again left with the problem that the Eternals themselves are not terribly interesting characters. Oh, sure, they've got conflicts of interests, but they seem to be caused by external factors rather than some sort of internal personality. I couldn't tell you how Ikaris and Thena would react differently to the same situation, and even their conversation about brainwashing doesn't do much to highlight the differences in their personalities. It doesn't help that the only Eternal who does have a genuine personality — Sersi — has had her basic characterization screwed with so many times that it's hard to know what she really thinks.

But I was expecting most of that. It's possible that things will kick into high gear next issue, when we're promised the sublime cosmic secrets of the Celestial. Though I have a feeling the revelations will somehow fall short of the mark set by recent cosmic work like Gødland.

One thing that I wasn't expecting, though, is how quickly I've tired of Daniel Acuña's art. When I first saw his work on Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters it was a bresh of freath air — a genuinely new look for mainstream American comics, pop and a little bit trashy, painted without being stiff, and made possible only because Acunñ controlled every aspect of the visual presentation. But two years later his style hasn't shown any signs of evolving, and the cracks are starting to show.

Eternals (2008) #1, p. 16

One of the significant weaknesses of Acuña's art is the sameness of his character designs. Sersi looks like Thena who looks like Linda West who looks like Miss America who looks like Emma Glenn who look like Phantom Lady. Makkari looks like Ikaris who looks like the Flash who looks like Firebrand who looks like Uncle Sam. And what makes it worse is that Acuña is clearly capable of achieving a wider range — Druig and Legba are truly unique-looking, the Red Bee had a different appearance than his other women, and there are background characters who are some wonderful-looking cartoons. It seems, however, that when drawing heroic archetypes he falls back on the same pattern over and over again.

There's also a lack of genuine emotion or expressive body language in his figure work. I like the expression on Sersi's face in the first panel above, but it doesn't seem to represent any sort of genuine emotion and definitely doesn't seem to match (or serve as a counterpoint to) her worried protestations. There's no longing in Sersi and Makkari's hand-holding, no passion in their kiss. There's no genuine worry on Sersi's face as she pleads with Makkari, and his reaction seems less like regret and more like "dropping a deuce."

He's also not a great storyteller. His simple grid layouts and the uncluttered compositions of his panels make pages are often very easy to read, but at the same time also no overall design to the page, nothing to lend a bit of extra drama to key scenes. One panel follows another, with no real attempt to juice any of them for maximum impact. There are no gestures or motifs to connect the panel, or a key moment that they're built around. There's no particular reason for any of the panels to be horizontal, vertical, or square. That dramatic kiss isn't elongated, and the extra-tall gutters just seem odd rather than meaningful. In short, it's a perfectly competent but dull page.

Still, it may be harsh to judge Acuña on his meager output. He's drawn what, twelve issues of comics in the last three years? And you certainly don't want to mess with a formula that's been successful. Still, I hope he shows us some new tricks soon or his success maybe short-lived.

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Nothing has been all right since...

Story by Mark Millar
Art by Tommy Lee Edwards
Lettered by John Workman

Thirteen-year old Toby has fled from the bitter reality of his parents' divorce into the fantasy world of Marvel comics. One day, though, he makes a shocking discovery — his world is about to be invaded by Marvel supervillains, who've set up shop in an abandoned house down the street.

Look, I'll be honest — I read some of Mark Millar's hyperbolic pre-release publicity for this one, and figured that it would be an awful piece of tripe I could rip into. And, as expected, there's nothing terribly original here, and some of the aspects of Toby's story feel like terrible clichés. But the whole comic is well executed and surprisingly intriguing, and I'm curious to see if Millar does go someplace interesting with this. Though I expect it'll turn out that the supervillain invasion is all in Toby's head, and he'll come back to reality but not before learning some important moral lessons from the superheroes.

For now, though, a cautious thumbs up.

One-Man Band

I suspect the real appeal of 1985 lies in Tommy Lee Edwards' art. I was going to say that he doesn't feel like a Marvel artist at all — but then I remembered that Marvel hasn't had a coherent house style since the early 90's. I think, more to the point, is that he's one of the few mainstream comic artists who are doing almost everything — penciling, inking, coloring — which allows his work to develop intriguing idiosynracies while avoiding the muddled mediocrity that comes out of the assembly line process. Here's a great example, an arresting two-page spread from the end of the book.

1985 #1, p. 20-21

This is a beautiful piece, with complex detail suggested by savage brushstrokes and scratchy pen marks, enhanced by the vivid warm colors that suffuse the entire drawing. It's hard to imagine a page like this emerging from the assembly line process. Edwards would have to execute much tighter pencils just to ensure that his intentions weren't lost. An inker would never lay down such rough inks, and would be tempted to leave large parts of the image open for color. And a colorist would tend towards representative color — a hint of the fire might bleed over into the background, but you can just bet Dr. Doom would be wearing a forest green cloak.

I know why Marvel and DC insist on the assembly line process — it prevents artists and authors from making ownership claims on corporate-held properties. But artists like Edwards and Daniel Acuña, who are developing compelling styles that are only achievable when they control all elements of the production process (and who are fast enough to produce work on a regular basis) may finally make them question their policies and allow some interesting work to emerge from the corporate ghetto.

The Death of the Bleed

Of course, I can hardly pick up a Marvel comic these days without noticing something missing — namely, the bleed. It seems like Marvel's done away with it completely these days, with the art on most of their high profile projects running right up to the edge of the page. I don't exactly mourn the loss of the bleed — it's an artificial constraint, born of the necessity to hedge against badly cut print jobs — but I'm not sure that Marvel has really thought through what eliminating the bleed means aesthetically.

First, the bleed allows the art to breathe by preventing side-by-side pages from running into each other. Now, this can be dealt with through some intelligent page composition, but since many commercial comics have to be drawn without knowing which pages will be run side-by-side (thanks, advertising!) this can be a daunting task.

Additionally, the bleed also allows the art to look like it belongs on the page. Eliminating it can make the art more absorbing and immersive — but it can also make the word balloons and panel gutters really stand out. I mean, really stand out — there are a few pages of 1985 where my eye isn't drawn to the imagery but to the vivid white gutters running across the page.

The bleed also prevents the art and lettering from running into the bound edge of the page. I've seen a few series in the last couple of years (Eternals comes to mind) where the art looked just fine when it was a pamphlet but became problematic when compiled into a hardback because word balloons are now vanishing into the gutter.

And finally, by totally eliminating the bleed, it becomes really obvious whenever there's a mis-cut page because there's now a crisp white edge running along the cut. (Again, the Eternals hardback comes to mind).

So Marvel? You might want to think about bringing the bleed back. It doesn't have to be as massive as it used to be, but you probably want something.

Morning in America

One thing that does puzzle me is why, exactly, 1985 is set in the mid-80's. I can think of plenty of reasons to set a story about Marvel comics in this era. There are the weird political and social dynamics of the Reagan era. It's halfway between the founding of the company and the current era, the beginning of the "modern era", the tail end of Jim Shooter's tenure, the beginning of the speculator craze and the ascendancy of the direct market. It's the tail end of the period where comics didn't have to compete for your entertainment dollar — when they were cheap, before they had to compete with video rentals and video games. It's the Secret Wars era, the period where many Marvel characters started to assume their iconic status, before everything became grim-n-gritty. For the current Marvel audience, it's the period where they started reading comics. But so far there's no thematic reason for the comic to be set during this era — in fact, you could probably set it in 1975 or 1995 without changing anything.

Or, if you want to be snarky, it could just be that 1985 was the last year you could actually find 13-year olds reading comics.

Annihilation: Conquest

On the edge of Kree space an entire Phalanx armada is defeated by a single man with no name. This mysterious stranger is possessed by the Exolon, alien parasites that feed on his soul and grant him strange powers that the techno-organic alients just can't cope with. Will the Phalanx be destroyed by this unholy wraith, or will his secrets be discovered their newest servant — Ronan the Accuser?

Wraith is a bit of a mixed bag. I like the character — essentially a sci-fi version of "The Man With No Name" with some neat slithery visuals — but revealing most of his origins and resolving all of his long-term goals in his first appearance sort of ruins his uniqueness and long-term viability. The story is also a bit rushed, with plot points rushed out, characters not given sufficient space to develop, and expository speeches taking the place of well-timed reveals.

It's not a good sign that major continuity problems start to pop up in the first miniseries. Assimilation by the Phalanx is presented as a process that takes days, if not weeks or months and can be shut off by the destruction of an outside entity, when in the prologue (and previous Technarchy appearances) it's a near-instantaneous infection that can be transmitted by touch and can only be thrown off from within. Hala appears to be the only world that's been direclty conquered by the Phalanx, when the prologue makes their influence clearly felt across the entire Kree galaxy. Large swaths of the population appear to be uninfected, though the prologue also clearly showed huge masses of infected Kree. The Supreme Intelligence, killed off at the end of Annihilation, is brought back to life just so he could be killed again.

Plus, there are some weird mystic things going on here that I'm not entirely comfortable with. Sure, Marvel's cosmic characters have always had a bit of a mystic side to them, but Wraith features creatures that feast on souls, vllains who try to conquer the universe from the "psychic plane" and a hero who absorbs the "Kree godhead" into himself. It feels less like science fiction and more like Warhammer 40K.

On the plus side, I like the concept of "selection," where the Phalanx allow assimilated creatures a degree of autonomy that increases their effectiveness as tools. It allows the villains to have a degree of individuality that the Technarchy really haven't had in previous appearances. It's half collaboration and half enslavement, which raises the question of where the Select's true loyalties lie. It also raises some additional questions about why the Phalanx are acting differently than usual...

And I really like the work Kyle Hotz is doing here. He's able to make Exolon and the Phalanx seem genuinely alien and unsettling. Plus, he's got a weird sort of Jack Davis thing going on which I enjoy. Plus, he's an effective storyteller.

Annihilation: Conquest — Wraith #1, p. 19

This is a simple but effective way to make a talking heads sequence more interesting. Typically, when drawing a face, it's best to leave more space in front of the eyes than behind them. It prevents things from feeling claustrophobic or alienating. Hotz does the opposite here, to good effect as the odd compositions help drive home the mutual suspicion between Wraith and Ra-Venn.

While I'm at it, here's an annoying technique I've seen in a lot of Marvel comics lately...

Annihilation: Conquest — Wraith #3, p. 8

A scene like this cries out for a sound effect, but there isn't really any way to slap a normal sound effect over top of the picture witout obliterating the original art, so they use the outline sound effect. You get your sound effect, and you can still see the art through it. Problem solved, right? Except the sound effect is barely readable. And those extra lines run counter to the shapes and thrust of the original image, which totally torpedoes the image comprhenension.

Now, this isn't a terrible technique — it actually works for simpler panels where a solid sound effect would still obscure important parts of the image. But the letterers have a bad habit of slapping it on top of complicated images like this one. Of course, if the original art left room for sound effects, the letters wouldn't have to resort to tricks like this...

Annihilation: Conquest

The original Annihilation was one of the few enjoyable comics that Marvel has released in the last few years. It was off the editorial radar and featured characters the licensing department honestly didn't care about — which gave the creators free reign to screw around with the status quo in a way that even Marvel's golden boys can't. The results were genuinely interesting, a little bit exhilarating, and blissfully liberated from the continuity quagmire of Marvel's Earth-bound heroes. And it sold pretty well, too, so now we have a sequel. Of course this time, editorial and licensing are paying attention, so the creators weren't going to have the same sort of free reign they had before, but if the new series is half as good as the original it'd still be worth checking out.

So is Annihilation: Conquest any good? Let's find out.

This prologue starts off by showing us the post-Annihilation state of the galaxy by through the eyes of two protagonists. On one side we have Phyla-Vell, who's helping the Priests of Pama distribute aid to to the downtrodden and needy. Thing is, she's on a backwater world that's not representative of the galaxy at large (and for that matter the temple she's supposed to be rebuilding doesn't seem to be damaged at all). On the other side we've got Star-Lord, who's helping the Kree upgrade their ruined defensive grid. Thing is, he's on Hala, which seems to have been completely untouched by the Annihilation Wave. Effectively, Abnett and Lanning are telling us the galaxy is in ruins rather than showing us. Strangely, their first issue of Nova did a much better job of setting the stage by showing us a harried Nova, hopping from one bombed-out planet to the next, putting out fires as fast as he could in the hopes that they wouldn't spread.

Anyway, back on Hala, Star-Lord has made a deal to update the Kree War-Net with Space Knight technology. Unfortunately, the Galadorians prove to be less than trustworthy, and Sentries start to run amok, destroying ships in orbit and bulding a big tower that somehow manages to seal off all of Kree space from the rest of the universe. One Sentry even makes it to the backwater planet that Phyla is living on and attacks her.1 As Phyla defeats the Sentry and gets a mystic vision commanding her to seek out "Kree savior," Star-Lord gets pushed off a skyscraper and the true villain stands revealed as the techno-organic Phalanx. Who look a lot different, and yet somehow familiar.

This part of Conquest actually works pretty well. There's some effective confusion as the main characters try to figure out just what's going on. There's a nice bit of misdirection with the Galadorians, and the closing sequence will be genuinely shocking to new readers but containis enough clues to tip off long-time readers. There's a definite direction — Phyla needs to go find the "savior" before the rest of the empire is assimilated. There are even a few mysteries — who's sending these visions to Phyla? Why are the Phalanx deviating from their usual M.O.?3

No, it's not Shakespeare, or even Lost. But it's enjoyable enough for disposable entertainment and intriguing enough to bring you back for more.

As for the art... well, you're going to notice a common thread over the next couple of days, which is that I think the artists are tremendous draftsmen and terrible storytellers.4 Here's a good example from the beginning of Prologue.

Annihilation: Conquest — Prologue p. 2

Now, the art team has rendered the holy living heck out of that temple. The perspective is spot on, and the inking and coloring help give the building substantial weight and volume. The coloring is suitably out-of-this world, soft and familiar yet alien, and the added detail doesn't overwhelm the pencils. There are lots of little details and imperfections that help particularize the structure — heck, there are even little snow shovels crammed off into one corner, though you can't see them at this size — and yet there's not so much detail that you're overwhelmed by it. The figures actually feel like they're standing in the space instead of just floating over top of it.

And yet this spectacular drawing is situated in the lower left-hand corner of an awkward two-page spread with no clear focal point. And that's the pattern the book follows — every time Perkins wows me with his drafstmanship he makes some awful storytelling decisions that confuse me. Here's another example from near the end of the book.

Annihilation: Conquest — Prologue p. 39

I get what that bottom tier is trying to do — our camera view remains unchanged as Star Lord plummets out of a window to his doom. But it doesn't read well, for a few reasons. First, The diagonal panels are cut at weird angles that make them seem strange rather than dynamic. The brown gutters don't sufficiently separate the individual panels. The shattered struts complicate things, because they're almost the same color as the gutters and run counter to the diagonal of the panel, which further confuses things. And there are just too many panels — you could probably get the same effect with three panels instead of five.

(Interestingly, that bottom tier works at better at screen resolution than it does at actual size, because there's less room to get lost in the details.)

I understand that space opera often depends on unrealistic superluminal communication, but having a Sentry a) instantly show up on a planet that the Kree empire has supposedly abandoned and b) immediately attack the only two named characters on said planet is just lazy writing.2

Strangely, though, I don't have a problem with the equally-unrealistic concept of a single spire instantly generating a completely impenetrable force field capable of sealing off a galaxy light-years across, which would require not only superluminal communications but also more power than a single star could possibly generate.

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My Favorite Things

Re-reading all my John Romita Jr. comics for yesterday's post, I stumbled across Peter Parker, Spider-Man v2 #6, which is one of my favorite Spider-Man comics.

Now, this isn't a great comic by any means. It's a simple, uninvolving story about the Kingpin reclaiming control of the underworld, mixed in with the interminable Senator Ward subplot that dominated the Spider-Man titles after the relaunch. There's a lot of talking, a lot of unresolved plot points, a short (but memorable) fight scene featuring Bullseye. It's got some great art by John Romita Jr., but it's not like JRjr Spider-Man comics are in short supply. So why do I like this particular issue so much?

Because the coloring is fantastic.

No, really. This particular issue (along with most of the Mackie/Romita Spider-Man issues) was colored by Gregory Wright, who's one of the most talented colorists working in the industry. The man is a master of simple, yet effective coloring jobs that enhance the linework without totally overwhelming it. And this issue is one of his unsung masterpieces.

You see, this issue takes place over the course of a single day, and Wright carefully alters his color palette to match the position of the sun. The first few pages take place in the hazy, pre-dawn hours, and are mostly blue and gray. The next sequence takes palce in the pale blue of early morning, and a few pages take place in the bright blue of the early afternoon. And then there's the capstone, a gorgeous sequence where Senator Ward and Arthur Stacy finally confront each other on a construction site at sunset...

Peter Parker, Spider-Man v2 #6, p. 13-18

I mean, wow.

We start on the first page with the sun just setting, the sky shot through with orange and magenta, and the city tinted rose by its faltering rays. And on the second page, the final rays of the sun give one last brilliant glow and the sky gradually becomes purplish and blue. After the sun goes down, we get a magenta after-glow, and the palette starts to shift. Everything becomes darker, from the blue of Arthur's suit to the skin tone of Senator Ward's bodyguard. The whites are shot through with grays and blues as everything becomes harder to see. And then, as bullseye makes his dramatic appearance, we give away to the blue of night-time, with the purplish haze of the city's glow lingering faintly on the horizon. From this point on out there's very little true white — everything is suffused with the faint shades of evening. Even Spider-Man's costume is dimly lit, still garishly bright but clearly not illuminated. And the dark backgrounds make the pink and white swooshes Wright uses for the motion lines stand out dramatically. Three pages after this, bullseye sets off a bomb, and the bright white sound effects and yellow explosion are extra-vivid because they're the only bright colors you've seen for a few pages.

It takes a lot of talent to constantly shift your palette like this, to create dramatic coloring effects on matte paper with flat color, and Wright did it on a comic where no one would have noticed if he'd just slapped down the same colors panel after panel.

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An Appreciation

Ever since I sat down to re-read Neil Gaiman's Eternals, I've been thinking about John Romita Jr. In many ways, Romita is a very unusual artist. In an era where artists struggle to meet deadlines, he's as regular as clockwork, and even churned out two books a month for a brief period in the late '90s. In an era where talent flits about rapidly, he's worked for the same employer regularly for almost thirty years, and even managed to rack up an impressive eight year run on one character. In an era where fans demand flashy realism he gives them solid abstraction, and yet he remains wildly popular.

So I thought I'd sit down and figure out what, exactly, is so appealing about JRjr.

Wolverine, v2 #24, p. 5

It's easy to understand the appeal of Romita's art. In many ways, he's a bridge between old-school Marvel and nu-Marvel. He's made a thorough study of old-school artists like Kirby and Ditko, as well as more recent talents like Miller, Sienkiewicz, Lee, and even Liefeld. He's dissected their styles, learned their tricks, and incorporated them into a style that's distinctly Marvel and still his own. But he's not like the average Marvel artist, who's seemingly learned to draw by copying coming books — he has a thorough knowledge of anatomy, composition and drawing technique that comes from long study and life drawing.

Unlike his contemporaries, Romita has no use for a murky, detail- and shadow-drenched realism. His style is incredibly bold — simple shapes composed of flat planes, heavy shadowing, and thick brushstrokes. Correspondingly, his style is also very abstract — he's not afraid to build shapes out of seemingly directionless hatching, to reduce details to a few quick strokes of the pen, to hint at something rather than obsessively belaboring it. His figures have tremendous solidity despite their seemingly empty construction. His mastery of foreshortening and perspective allows him to create dynamic, active layouts full of energy and power. When Spider-Man punches the Hulk in the face, you can feel his knuckles bruising.

It's the sort of technique that only becomes possible after years of thirty years of work, that one finds in the late period of great artists like Kirby or Adams. And like all great artists, his style continues to evolve.

Thor v2 #25, p. 11

Consider the above sequence from Thor #25. It's hard to imagine any of Marvel's current artists turning in a page like that. It's all lines, lines and blobs, and a big black blob that could be a silhouette. It feels sketchy and loose, it takes all shorts of cheap shortcuts (especially in the hands), and it features a bunch of little panels, medium shots, not marketable pin-ups.

And yet it's a masterful piece of drawing that radiates power more than some obsessively overworked piece of garbage ever could, and is strikingly beautiful to boot.

Which isn't to say that he doesn't have weaknesses. Though his drawing style may have evolved over the years, in many ways his storytelling skills have not. He's still at his most comfortable when drawing an old-school Marvel comic, where a flawed hero works out his personality problems while punching someone else in the face.

Peter Parker, Spider-Man #84, p. 7

He tends to work best with writers like Chris Claremont, Howard Mackie, or Mark Millar, who keep the story plugging along at a brisk clip with lots of action, colorful characters, and dynamic situations. Conversely, he tends to be a poor match with writers like J. Michael Straczynski or Neil Gaiman, who tend to write slowly-paced comics with lots of introspection and talking heads. Indeed, when he's paired with the latter sort of writer his boredom literally radiates from the page, as he dutifully ticks off the panels until the next fight scene.

Still, the right writer can coax some legendary work out of him. But of course, to be a legendary artist, you've also got to work on some legendary storylines, create legendary characters, produce legendary layouts. What is Romita's magnum opus, the one storyline he'll aways be remembered for, the one fans will point to as one of comics high water marks? I racked my brains for hours trying to find a storyline that would fit the bill.

I couldn't think of one.

Thor, v2 #11, p. 17

And that's frustrating. Romita has a vast body of work that spans thirty years and includes substantial runs on almost all of Marvel's most popular characters. Surely there must be something in there there that's worth remembering.

Maybe Daredevil: The Man Without Fear — but no. Oh, sure, it's one of the greatest Daredevil comics of all time, but there's nothing here that feels like John Romita Jr. It's a Frank Miller comic through and through, and the art is saturated with Miller's storytelling and compositional tricks. Indeed, on some of the pages you can almost imagine Romita working directly from Miller's breakdowns with no variation.

At first glance his two-year run on Thor seems to fit the bill. He's working with top-notch collaborators in Dan Jurgens, Klaus Janson, and Greg Wright. It features some of his best drawing — abstract yet powerful, crackling with dynamism and energy that leaps off the page, with some great storytelling and some exciting new characters that have distinctive designs that could truly be called Romita-esque. Most of the dangling plotlines are wrapped up by the time Romita leaves, which allows it to stand on its own as a nice solid unit. But his run on Thor is also plagued by fill-in issues, some of which happen to resolve key plot elements. And while it's a good read, it's also big, dumb, and stupid, a back-to-basics approach to the character that really hasn't influenced his later portrayals in any meaningful way. Overall, it pales in comparison to other legendary Thor runs like Kirby's, Simonson's, or even Jurgens' own "Reigning."

How about the "Enemy of the State" arc of Wolverine? It's another high profile comic, and once again he's working with top talent in Millar, Janson, and mounts. Perhaps the drawing isn't his best — the later issues feature some work that's crude, if effective — but it's still very good. It's a solid storyline that's's wrapped up in twelve issues with no loose ends. And yet, it too is big, dumb, and stupid, and hasn't led to any lasting changes in the Wolverine mythos. It is a high water mark for the character of Wolverine, but given how thin Wolverine has been spread over the years his high water marks are more of a gentle flow than a dramatic flood.

World War Hulk? Even higher profile, but also bigger and dumber than anything else he's ever done, wit a deeply unsatisfying ending. Eternals is a bit more adult and features some exciting design work, but it's too talky and the ending is equally unsatisfying.

I suppose, given the lack of alternatives, there's always his eight-year stint on Spider-Man.

Wolverine, v2 #23, p. 10

Now, John Romita Jr.'s Spider-Man is like comfort food — enjoyable, but not all that good. He was brought in post-"Clone Saga" to prop up a floundering, directless title. His art managed to stabilize sales somewhat, but Howard Mackie and the other writers were never really able to come up with a new direction for the character that stuck. At least Howard Mackie knew how to write to Romita's strengths — short, old school stories with lots of cool characters and fight scenes. He was eventually replaced by J. Michael Straczynski, who managed to do the impossible — he made JRjr comics unreadable by slowing down the pace and filling them with talking heads. And magic.

Still, an eight year run is nothing to sneeze at, especially combined with his four-year run from the '80s. He's drawn more Spider-Man comics than Steve Ditko, more than Todd McFarlane, than Ron Frenz, more than his father, more than anyone except maybe Mark Bagley. For many readers, his Spider-Man is the definitive Spider-Man.

In that sense, he's a lot like his father — perhaps not as dynamic or inventive as Ditko or Kirby, but a tremendous artist nonetheless, and one who set the standard for all future depictions of a character. It's worth noting, though, that John Romita Sr. was Marvel's art director — his drawing style was Marvel's house style, the benchmark that all artists were compared to. JRjr, howver, is drawing in an era where there is no house style. He's just one superstar artist in a stable of superstar artists, and Marvel just takes his presence for granted.

And truth be told, Marvel does take him for granted. They don't have to sell him or his comics, because they sell themselves. Often, he's been used to prop up sales on a struggling title, to drum up interest for a struggling mini-series, to ease the transition to a new creative team when a hot-shot artist jumps ship to another company. It's great to be the go-to guy, but when you're running around putting out everyone else's fires you don't really get a chance to express yourself.

Peter Parker, Spider-Man #87, p. 4

Then again, why shouldn't Marvel take Romita for granted? He dutifully does whatever they ask for, doesn't make waves, doesn't push for more creative control. He's never even thought of jumping to another company — indeed, he's only published one comic without Marvel's comic, and that was apparently Marvel's idea. When Romita came up with the concept for The Gray Area, Joe Quesada decided that it didn't fit into Marvel's publishing strategy and suggested that he take them over to Image might be a better fit. He even released him from his exclusive contract so that he could go work on the comic.

Now, The Gray Area wasn't exactly a huge success. It had an awkward plot ineptly handled by a neophyte comics writer. It had a ridiculously high price point — $6 an issue, for a normal-sized comic. But it sold way better than would have been anticipated, purely on the strength of Romita's art. And for months, the news sites couldn't stop talking about the fact that Romita was doing his own stories, for a company other than Marvel.

Whoops.

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear, p. 108

Still, after The Gray Area, Romita dutifully returned to Marvel, so their faith in him wasn't exactly misplaced. And they have been giving him higher-profile assignments such as "Enemy of the State," Eternals, and the World War Hulk. Oh, and they also launched a new creator-owned so they could allow Brian Bendis and David Mack's to pursue their own artistic visions without releasing them from their exclusive contracts.

And that's where we find Romita today, still working at the House Jack Built, still producing consistently excellent work at a steady clip, for storylines that will be forgotten as soon as their finished. Still, Marvel is showing him more repsect than they have for some time, and perhaps one of these days they'll finally let him cut loose, to draw stories and create characters that we'll all remember for a long, long time.

Neil Gaiman thinks a lot about immortality — it's a recurring theme in his works. So it's not a surprise that one of the key themes of Gaiman's Eternals is what it means to be immortal. Gaiman's Eternals are not merely long-lived, highly-evolved humans — they're engineered biological constructs, millions of years old. They cannot breed, cannot die, cannot grow or change. They're Eternal in the true sense of the word. Immortal. Immutable. Static. Stagnant.

It stands to figure that at least one Eternal isn't happy with that state of affairs. In this case, it's Sprite, the youngest of the Eternals, who has been pushed over the edge by a million years of preadolescence, a million years on the cusp of becoming something else. When sees a chance to change the world and become something else, he seizes it. And, just to make sure that no one can stop his plan, he changes the other Eternals as well, wiping their minds of their true nature in the process. Of course, the Eternals eventually regain their memories and powers, and clean up the unintended consequences of Sprite's actions.

The problem is that this isn't the end of a story. It's the begining of a story. For the first time in a million years, the Eternals have had to cope with real change. This is something that should shake them to their very core. They should be confused, frightened, by these new sensations and experiences. Some of them might be angry to have change forced upon them. Some might even long for the simple pleasures that they experienced for one sweet, shining moment.

Of course, there's no money for Marvel in that. So the next time the Eternals show up, Gaiman's story will be referenced in a way that makes it clear it really happened, without actually following up on the consequences in any meaningful way.

I'm a little more concerned about Gaiman's treatment of the Celestials. In the book they're depicted variously as the "owners" of Earth, as avenging warriors destroying Lemuria in an act of holy vengeance, and even as mere gluttons downing Deviants by the handful. Of course, all of these depictions come from highly unreliable narrators. Everything Ikaris and Makkari recall in the first two issues is suspect, shadowy memories half-obscured by Sprite's brainwashing. The Deviants are merely repeating what Ajak told them, and may have been lying in order ensure their cooperation. Still, the extended conversation between Makkari and the Dreaming Celestial suggests that Gaiman's sensibilities don't quite align with mine.

Gaiman's metaphor is apt, but he doesn't go far enough. I certainly couldn't explain the concept of the Holy Trinity to a blade of grass. But the lack of referents is only part of the problem. Grass is so alien, so far beneath me that being able to communicate with it is completely unthinkable. Gaiman's Celestial is not a normal human trying to talk to a blade of grass. It's a primate researcher trying to teach grammar to a chimp. This is no alien, no space god, just a creature only slightly removed from our own experience.

Still, Gaiman gets the Celestials right in at least one important aspect.

Marvel, you're on notice. Once again the Celestials are here to observe, to watch and weigh. And one day, sooner than you think, they will pass judgment. If if you are found wanting, you will be cleansed from the Earth. Which could be a handy excuse, in case your continuity ever gets so screwed up that you need to re-set the entire damn universe or something.

Marvel was not kind to the Eternals following the end of their first series. First they were shoehorned into the Marvel universe proper by Roy Thomas in Thor, which also jettisoned the one thing that made the Eternals unique (the Celestials and the Fifty Year Judgment). Then, in the pages of Iron Man and Avengers they were tied to another group of generic super people (the Titanians), most of the Deviants were smooshed into a big cube, and most of the Eternals were sent packing to outer space. So when the Eternals were given their own mini-series in 1985, writer Peter B. Gillis had his work cut out for him. He was left with a handful of recognizable protagonists and antagonists, all of whom were now bereft of purpose.

The Eternals v2 #1, p. 5

I suppose the question is, are the Eternals and Deviants interesting enough on their own that they can survive without the Celestials? The obvious answer is, of course, no. A race of generic super people is not a sufficiently interesting concept on its own. That's why we don't regularly see series about the New Gods, Eternals, or Inhumans. No, in order to grab the reader's interest, there needs to be something more. For the original series, that grabber was the Celestials. Without them, the Eternals will have to grab the reader's imagination with their personalities.

And frankly, the Eternals don't have much in the way of personality.

So to a large extent, The Eternals v2 is a successful attempt to create personalities to go with the powers and costumes. Thena is full of self-doubt brought on by her new role as Prime Eternal, which is only heightened by her growing affection for Kro. Ikaris is rash, angry, with a thin veneer of calm covering a soul filled with pain and rage. Makkari is so obsessed with doing things quickly that he sometimes forgets to do them well. Sersi's flighty hedonism becomes even more prominent — but she also gains a core of worldy wisdom which makes her, in a way, the strongest character of all the Eternals. A few new Eternals are thrown into the mix to round out the cast — the stoic samurai Kingo Sunen1, the mysteriously tragic Phastos, the languid Koryphoros, and Cybele, who is, uh, a red-head.

Of course, a good story needs good antagonists as well. Kro is back, of course, largely unchanged — he's still a devious schemer who seeks to improve not only his lot, but the lot of his entire race, but the "tragic anti-hero" aspects of his character are emphasized. Gillis also introduces one of the greatest Marvel villains ever, the sinister priest-king Ghaur, who plans to take his grievances to the gods themselves. And then there's the Dreaming Celestial, the enigmatic threat that may control the fate of the world...

The Eternals v2 #8, p. 18-19 (composite)

Simultaneously, Gillis is also trying to inject some adult sophistication and nuance into the world of the Eternals. The Eternals are no longer simple paragons of purity — the ones that remain on Earth have such radically different agends that it's almost impossible to get them to agree on anything.

The Deviants are given additional backstory that makes them pitiably sympathetic.2 Now, instead of being forced to lived underground by the space gods, they've been forced to live underground by their own fear and suspicion.3 The Deviants are not monsters by nature, but have been made monsters by the power-mad ruling class, who care only for themselves. And even Ghaur, for all his melodramatic mwa-ha-haing, is still the product of a system that makes him both a monster and a victim.

And, of course, the Gillis drives home that for all their differences, the Eternals and Deviants are still human. That's why Kro and Thena finally succumb to their love. That's why Koryphoros forges a powerful bond with the Deviant artist Yrdisis. That's why the Reject and Karkas are treated as the Eternals' equals, instead their pets.

The Eternals v2 #7, p. 19

Then Walt Simonson takes over the series with issue #9 and all that goes out the window.

Normally, I love Walt Simonson. He writes some damn fine superhero stories, and the conclusion to The Eternals is one of them. Indeed, who doesn't remember the end of this series? Ghaur, grown to giant-size, single-handedly reducing Olympia to rubble! The Eternals, unable to form the Uni-Mind in their darkest hour! The megalomanaical Ghaur, hoist by his own petard and forced to obey the space gods he despises! The Eternals and Avengers, battling side-by-side against a Celestial!

But Simonson is not really a writer I associate with nuance, and he jettisons most of the sensibility that made the earlier issues absorbing. The Eternals are good, and the Deviants are evil. Ghaur no longer seeks to right the "injustices" of the space gods, but merely to conquer the world.
Ikaris is right, Thena is wrong. Sersi goes from "every life is precious" to "a thousand deviants aren't worth the life of one human" in the span of about three panels. Koryphoros and Yrdisis? The entire subplot is dropped. Thena and Kro? Turns out Kro was sapping her will the whole time with a brain mine, 'cause god forbid we have two people who love each other in spite of their differences.

Once again, we no longer have characters, but generic super people.

Unfortunately, it's Simonson's take and not Gillis's that became the new standard. And that's why the Eternals had to wait another twenty years before someone gave them a fair shake.

Not technically new character, I know. But given that his previous appearance consisted of two panels where his face wasn't even visible, for all intents and purposes he's brand new.

The Deviants in the Kirby series are pitiably sympathetic as well, but it's enterly subtextual. Reading between the lines it's entirely obvious that their wretched fate is entirely of their own making.

After all, if the Celestials had wanted to eliminate the Deviants, do you really think they could have been stopped? No, it's far more likely that the responded to aggression they always do — with equal force, directed without malice.

Having said that, I love The Eternals. Why? Mostly, it has to do with these guys...

The Eternals #3 p. 2-3

Admittedly, the Celestials are not completely orignal creations — they're heavily inspired by the "ancient astronauts" theory popularized by Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? This is a point in their favor — because the underlying concept has been plucked from the zeitgeist, it's instantly graspable. No, what makes the Celestials unique is Kirby's willingness to take the ancient astronaut theory to extremes. Okay, he concedes, the gods are aliens. Does that make them any less godly? And that's the primal appeal of The Eternals — not first contact between man and alien, but the face-to-face confrontation between man and his creators.

It's a confrontation that would probably be less terrifying if our creators weren't alien in every sense of the world.

The Eternals #13 p. 23

The Celestials are some of Kirby's true design masterpieces — awe-inspiring, powerful, and truly alien in every sense of the word. Others have drawn attention to their similarities to Hopi kachinas and other forms of pre-Colombian art, but at their heart they're 100% pure Kirby, composed from powerful gestures, iconic actions, crackling energies and geometric squiggles.

At first glance, the Celestials are roughly humanoid, but that's where the similarities end, because while the outline is right all of the details are wrong. Their forms are stunted, simplified, doll-like. Their order is asymmetrical, regimented but not organized, simultaneously technological and biological. Even the geometric squiggles which define their bodies seem structured at first, only to give way to total chaos upon close observation. Moreso than any other Kirby creation, they feel uncomfortable on the page, as if they were merely an approximation of something so complicated that it could never truly be understood.

Worst of all, they have no faces, only helmets — robotic, masklike, unfeeling, inhuman. Inscrutable.

I think at this point in our development, mankind could cope with the sudden appearance of aliens — it'd be a blow to our own sense of uniqueness, but it's not like we don't deal with existential ennui every day. We could probably even deal with space gods — it would involve an awkward period where all our religions had to reshuffle their beliefs, but mankind is nothing if not adaptable. We could even deal with angry space gods — anger is a very human emotion, after all, and it can be placated. But the Celestials aren't benevolent Space Brothers or avenging Martians. We've encountered the gods, and they turn out to be truly alien fundamentally unknowable.

And like all gods, they're here to judge us.

There is nothing man can do but submit to the Fifty Year Judgment. There is nowhere we can run, nowhere we can hide. We will be observed, weighed, and if found wanting, destroyed.

The Eternals #10 p. 7

I have to admit, the Eternals and Deviants actually work well in the context of the Fifty Year Judgement.

On one hand, you have the Eternals. They are prepared to accept the judgment of the Celestials — they face them with their heads held high, glorious, majstic, and proud. They have nothing to fear. Or do they? What have the Eternals been doing with that power for millennia? They've been skulking on mountaintops, isolated from the world, drowning themselves in sensual pleasures and intellectual masturbation. They've been given a head start on the rest of humanity, and they've been coasting on that for centuries.

The Deviants, of course, are their polar opposites. They fear the judgment of the Celestials because they're crippled by guilt — ashamed of their actions, their beliefs, and their very nature. But unlike the Eternals, the Deviants have far more accomplishments to their credit — they've pulled themselves out of the muck developed fantastic technologies, even conquered the world. But confronted with the seeming perfection of the Eternals, they've become obsessed with surfaces. They'd rather place their trust in the Reject, whose perfect face masks the heart of a wild beast, than with Karkas, whose monstrous body hides a sublime soul.

And where does mankind stand in all of this? Why, man is the key. If the Celestials were going to pass judgment based on the actions of the Eternals and Deviants, they'd have done it millenia ago, for they haven't changed. No, the Celestials are here to observe you and I, to see how we live, what we make, where we've been and where we're going. Of course, we have no way of knowing their judgment entails. They could be basing it on our psychic potential, our environmental awareness, or even the quality of our puff pastries. Perhaps if we know what they wanted, we could never truly find it. Perhaps the Celestials themselves don't know what they're searching for.

I suppose it brings some small comfort that even if the criteria for judgment are fundamentally unknowable, we'll live or die on our own merit.

The Eternals #7 p. 16

Here's the problem with The Eternals from Marvel's perspective — it cannot take place in the Marvel universe.

Certainly, Kirby never made any attempt to tie them to the Marvel universe. Yes, there are a few off-hand references to the Fantastic Four and the Eternals fight a cosmic-powered Hulk robot, but these are done in a way that suggests that they're pop culture references. Certainly, it's hard to imagine an army of Deviants attacked New York and the Avengers weren't called out to stop them.

But as far as editorial is concerned, these characters need to be tied to the greater universe if Marvel is going to exploit them financially. Roy Thomas certainly did his best to shoehorn them into the Marvel universe during his less-than-stellar run on Thor. The Eternals and Deviants make the transition more-or-less intact — they're forced to co-exist with the Inhumans and are retroactively inserted into the backstory of some other generic Kirby super people, but they've been allowed to carve out their own niche.

But the transition is fatal to the Celestials. Now they're no longer the gods, but just alien gods, in a universe teeming with both aliens and deities. Why should they frighten the average citizen of the Marvel universe more than Thor, the Skrulls, or Galactus? They can be fought off, driven back, even seemingly slain by lightweights like X-Factor. Their genetic experiments, inscrutable, unknowable, are duplicated (and in some ways, surpassed) by the stagnant Kree. Ouch.

The worst part of Thomas's resolution is that it turns The Eternals into a stereotypical Marvel comic. The male gods and the (out-of-character) Eternals engage in an utterly pointless battle until the female gods swoop in to save the day with love. And make no mistake, this is a war between gods — mankind itself has no place here. Our merits and sins are not weighed on some inscrutable cosmic scale whose judgement is impartial and immutable. Instead, the actions of few valiant, non-human exemplars saves the day, while the rest of the world is reduced to a impotent rabble, unable to understand or comprehend all that's happened.

A lousy lesson for real life, but business as usual in the Marvel universe.

I wasn't planning to write about Howard the Duck today, but it seemed appropriate to.

I think I stumbled across Howard the Duck at just the right age — 14 or so. If you came across these comics as an adult you'd probably be amused. But if you came across them as a teenager, these comics would blow your mind. They're the perfect stepping stone for someone who's just about finished with adolescent power fantasies, who are looking for something more, but who aren't looking for everything to be weighed down by a stultifying adult serious.

We could use a lot more comics designed to blow a 14 year-old's mind.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Howard the Duck, Howard is the only sane man in a crazy world, a cranky Cassandra can see what's going on but who is unable to affect it. Also, he's also a duck. Trapped in our world by forces beyond our control, he's a perrential outsider, buffeted hither and yon by fate, and distinguished from most cartoon protagonists by the realism of his reactions to essentially absurd situations. He runs from conflict. He obsesses about trivialities. He procrastinates. He gives up. He gets irritable and angry over trivial tings. He has nervous breakdowns. And, like all Marvel characters, he's constantly thrown into one ludicrous conflict after another, which only serves to push him further and further over the edge.

A lot of people think of issue #16 — the "Dreaded Deadline Doom" issue — as the series' high point, but I think that's a mistake. I think #16 is a very good issue, and certainly like no other mainstream comic you'd be reading at the time (or since). But the series really kicks into high gear a lot earlier, in issue #11, when Howard has his first nervous breakdown. That's like nothing you've seen before or since, and except for a few missteps — such as an ill-conceived parody of Star Wars that goes nowhere — the series remains of consistently high quality through issue #27, which is coincidentally Gerber's last issue as writer.

Here's one of my favorite sequences1, from Howard the Duck #27. At this point, Howard has been kicked around by fate for over a year. He's lost his beloed Beverly to Dr. Bong, been turned into a human, forced to live on the streets, been forced to battle mystic forces for the fate of the entire universe, been assaulted by a human scouring pad, been brainwashed by an overzealous public decency committee, and been kidnapped by the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime. He's finally managed to escape from the Ringmaster, only to see one of his few friends get critically wounded in a freak gun accident.

His subconscious puts Howard on trial, and it seems he's headed for another crack-up...

Howard the Duck #27, p. 2-7

There's some nice storytelling from Gene Colan here, which is perfectly in tune with Gerber's writing. As Howard becomes more agitated, the panel borders and shapes become more and more out-of-kilter, the actions more exaggerated. The first two pages have a mirrored layout that lends them extra stability, which makes the pages that follow seem even more chaotic. Colan's usual distortions and exaggerated perspective lend the whole scene an eerie, dreamlike quality. And that final image of Howard, so angry that irritated cartoon steam is streaming out of his ears, is done with some masterful shading that makes it seem genuinely frightening instead of funny.

It's scenes like this one that made Howard a classic that's foundly remembered even today. I know it's one of my favorites.

Or at least, my favorite sequence that wasn't already reprinted by the late Tim O'Neil last week.

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Hulk Times A Hundred Equals HOLOCAUST!

Written by Roger Stern
Illustrated by Steve Ditko & John Byrne
Edited by Joe Rosen
Colored by K. Feduniewicz
Edited by Mark Gruenwald

Ah, 1984 — a good year for comics. Here's a little-seen treat featuring work from some of that era's best mainstream creators — Avengers Annual #18.

The plot of the story is pretty simple — villains keep invading Bruce Banner's abandoned base at Northwind Observatory1, so the government sends out a team of scientists to catalogue Banner's inventions and a team of Avengers to protect them. Unfortunately, the scientists themselves attract the attention of yet one more supervillain — Arnim Zola, who wants to capture them and pick their brains clean. And with an army of unstable Hulk clones at his command, Zola he might just be able to hold the Avengers at bay. It's a simply-told, continuity-heavy but still fun superhero story, and it's an enjoyable read but nothing memorable.

The real treat is the art team of Steve Ditko and John Byrne. A weird combo, isn't it?2 The art is credited to the two of them without specifying who did what, but it's pretty obvious that Byrne is inking over Ditko's pencils here — the surface polish is pure Byrne but the storytelling, figure construction and underdrawing is unmistakeably Ditko. They actually make a pretty good team — Byrne softens and modernizes Ditko's rough edges without smoothing them down too far he way that, say, Romeo Tanghal does. Here's a nice sequence from the book where Captain Marvel sticks it to Zola...

Avengers Annual #13, p. 32

That's some nice, super-clear storytelling. The diagonal tilt of Reed Richards and Hank Pym lead into Zola's amorphous body in the second panel, and his globby arms lead down to the third panel, where the downward thrust of Captain Marvel's hands propel you into the scene-stealing explosion in the final panel. Zola's massive magenta bulk also leads you through all four panels, as that solid, otherworldly color instantly attracts your attention until it's blown all over the place in that final panel.

And what a final panel that is, eh? Byrne's added shadowing and line weight make Ditko's explosion feel fully three-dimensional3. A pity this isn't a 3-D comic, because that would have been spectacular.

A good issue to have for the Ditko completist, just for the sheer novelty of his collaboration with another comics superstar.

This story takes place in the period after Hulk #300, when the near-mindless and extremely savage Hulk was banished to another dimension by Dr. Strange.

Admittedly, it's not as weird as Avengers Annual #14's art team of John Byrne and Kyle Baker, but that's a story for another day.

Though, truth be told, that flat sound effect does undercut the effect slightly.

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Not the most original sentiment, but it's true. I think advertising is a form of spiritual cancer that perverts and cheapens every medium it touches. It saturates our culture to the point where the average consumer is completely desensitized to its presence — and responds by oversaturating our culture even further. It panders to the lowest common denominator, and frequently serves no purpose except to propagate more advertising

Unfortunately, advertising is also the only thing keeping many media afloat. Would we have modern television, newspapers, and magazines without advertising? Probably — but they'd be much riskier ventures, and they're already terribly risky to begin with. So I've learned to tolerate advertising, even if I don't like it.

Recently, however, advertising has begun showing up in places that try my patience. Floating in front of website content. Hidikng on the backs of my baseball tickets and at the bottom of my supermarket receipts. Sitting in half hour blocks in front of movies.

And on the inside covers of comic trades.

DC and Marvel have been running in-house ads on the inside covers of their trade paperbacks for a few years now. Even though I resent their presence, DCs inside cover ads are fairly tasteful and restrained. The Marvel ads, on the other hand, tend to be in full color and extremely distracting. Even worse, while DC limits itself to ads on the inside back cover, Marvel runs ads on the inside front cover. Now, avertising and books don't have to be an unpleasant mix. Virtually every book I have has some form of advertising in it — whether it's a single page in the front of the book listing other books by the same author, or a slightly more detailed list of other titles from the same publisher in the back. I can live with that. What I really object to in DC and Marvel's case is the placement of the ads on the inside cover.

The bean-counters mjst love the inside cover ads — it lets them cram two ads into the book without adding an extra leaf to their printing costs. But the inside cover is an integral part of setting the mood of a book. Well-designed inside covers, like those on Dark Horse's Hellboy trades or Fantagraphics' Love and Rockets hardcovers, help set the tone for everthing to follow. If nothing else, even a clean white page empties the mind so it can be filled with something new and mondrous. Running ads in this space make a comic seem like less of an artistic achievement and more like a short, hideously overpriced magazine.

I suppose I should just be glad that Marvel's finally stopped running clip-and-save subscription coupons in the back of their trades...

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"The Killing Season, Part One"

Story and art by Frank Cho
Colors by Dave Stewart
Lettering by Rob Steen

It's no secret that I'm not fond of Frank Cho — I think he's a talented draftsman, and an abysmal storyteller. But the circus that's sprung up around his latest project is so bizarre that I was tempted to check it out.

Cho's take on Shanna the She-Devil was originally solicited as part of Marvel's MAX imprint, which was ostensibly created to allow Marvel to published sophisticated, adult comics but wound up publishing comics filled with curse words, ultraviolence, and boobs.1 And if there's anything we know about Frank, it's that he loves boobs2, so in his proposal ditched the only thing he didn't like about Marvel's bikini-clad, jungle-dwelling redhead — the bikini. Apparently Axel Alonso likes boobs too, and Shanna was put on the publication schedule.

Then, or so the story goes, George Clooney dropped out of talks to do a Nick Fury after seeing a few issues of Fury, and the suits in Marvel's head office freaked out and shut down the MAX imprint. Some titles were dropped, some were moved to the Marvel Knights imprint, and some (like Alias) were reworked into more mainstream properties.

Shanna, though, was a bit more problematic. It was too racy to publish as-is, but it had been heavily promoted and featured some lush art from a fan-favorite creator, so it couldn't be dropped either. The solution? Delay the book for a few months, and use the extra time to cover up the naughty bits with stray objects. I'm surprised Frank went along with it, given how he used to whine whenever Creators' Syndicate told him to tone down Brandy's bust-line.

Anyway, the comic has finally shipped, and let me see if I can sum up this issue in two panels...

Shanna the She-Devil #1, p. 9

Shanna the She-Devil #1, p. 20

It's like looking into the mind of a thirteen year-old, isn't it?

Anyway, there's not much to talk about. The plot's pretty basic — a group of special forces commandos are stuck on an island filled with dinosaurs and Nazis, and they find Shanna floating upside down in a tube. Thanks to the miracle of "decompressed storytelling" that's all that happens. If anything, with the focus on Nazis and dinosaurs this feels more like an issue of Budd Root's Cavewoman than Shanna.

I find Cho's art very frustrating. He's an incredible draftsman, equally at home drawing beautiful women3, complicated technology or bloodthirsty dinosaurs. He's certainly capable of creating striking individual images — like the cover, or that powerful shot of the velociraptor standing in front of the Nazi flag. But he doesn't seem to have a feel for overall page composition or panel-to-panel storytelling — actions don't flow from one panel to the next, and he seems genuinely incapable of making scenes feel exciting. In this sense, decompression works in Cho's favor, as he can construct a series of powerful individual images and then just find a way to get from one to the other.

Of course, by now you probably know whether you like Frank Cho or not. This issue isn't going to change your mind. Then again, some times you're just in the mood for a comic starring a beautiful, scantily clad redhead...

Other MAX titles have included Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's Fury, which was about as mature as an Andy Sidaris movie; Chuck Austen's US War Machine, which allowed Austen to apply his uniquely sensitive touch to the issue of racism; and Ryan Kinnaird's Phoenix, which featured more naked female flesh than an issue of Barely Legal. Come to think of it, the only genuinely "adult" comic to come out of the MAX imprint was Steve Gerber's return to Howard the Duck.

Nothing wrong with that — I like 'em too. But apparently not as much as Frank.

Beautiful woman, anyway. They've all got the same face, just different hair.

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My friend Mike keeps saying that this blog is too negative. I find that fascinating, because I generally find something to like in almost everything I review. But still, Mike's a pretty smart guy, so he's probably on to something. So from now on, Mondays at Different Package will be devoted to the things I actually enjoy. This week, we'll start with the first comic I had to have...

Growing up in suburban Philadelphia, there was one thing I knew about DC Comics — they were for babies. Superman? Lame. The Justice League? Lamer. Batman? He was okay, I guess, but that's only 'cause he had a TV show. Marvel Comics, though? They were exciting. Their heroes had real problems like you and me, and they were set in the real world.1 We had an insatiable appetite for Marvel Comics — but of course, being kids, we couldn't afford many. So we turned to the next best thing — The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, Deluxe Edition.

The Handbook is like a hundred comics in one! Every issue has Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men and the Avengers! Each entry has romance, tragedy, and comedy! There's enough trivia to satisfy the most demanding know-it-all, and each entry is a feast for the eyes! Plus, you can use the Handbook to answer all of fandom's most burning questions. Who's stronger — Thor or the Hulk?2 Who's faster — Quicksilver or the Whizzer?3 Who weighs more — Volstagg or the Kingpin?4

All joking aside, the Handbook has a well-deserved reputation as the Encyclopedia Brittanica of comics. Each entry is just thorough enough to give you a good overview of a character's powers and history, while just vague enough to leave you hungering for more. It makes sense out of the nonsensical, untangles the knots of continuity, and looks pretty, to boot.

If there's anything useful I've actually learned from the Handbook, it's a healthy skepticism. The plot summaries in the Handbook make every story sound like an incredible epic that shook the Marvel universe to its foundations.6 But the actual stories themselves tend to be underwhelming — it's not that they're bad, per se, but that most of them are just, y'know, kind of there. Memories and summaries, combined with fannish enthusiasm, tend to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. It's always better to recide and decide for yourself.

I've put together four complete or near-complete sets of OHOTOMUDE over the years. The first set was given to me by Greg Stanbach in 1988, and it's probably stil stting in my little brother's closet somewhere. The second set was assembled my freshman year at college, and lasted about a month before I just gave it to Edwin K. Chan (who seemed like he'd appreciate it more than I would). The third set was finished in my senior year, and got thrown out when I was getting rid of a huge pile of comps dumped on me by Don Simpson. The fourth was pieced together a few years later from the quarter bin, and I still have it today.

Now if only I could find cheap copies of the OHOTMUDE Update '89...

Places like Asgard and the Shi'ar Empire. You know, the real world.

They both have Class 100 strength, but as we all know, the madder the Hulk gets, the stronger the Hulk gets. The Hulk wins. Of course, that assumes we're talking about the savage green Hulk and not the crafty gray Hulk or the "Professor" Hulk or the snake Hulk.

Quicksilver.

As we all know, Asgardian flesh and bone are three times denser than their Earthly counterparts, so Volstagg gets the nod.

See? I can be a big dorky fanboy, too. Though I'd gladly give up everything I know about Galactus's orgins to remember everything I've forgotten from chemistry class.

Well, except for the issue of Iron Man where Tony Stark piloted his "Brainosaur" craft. There's no way anyone could make that sound cool.

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When you do your own lettering, you pick up on little things that most casual readers don't notice. Never cross the tails on your word ballons. Bold text is slightly italicized. Only draw serifs on the letter I when it's used as a personal pronoun. And never, ever use the word "flick" in a sentence...

Captain America and the Falcon #163, p. 7

Samuel T. Wilson, I don't care what you say on the streets, but don't you bring that jive talk into my house!

There wasn't anything waiting for me at Phantom this week, so I decided to splurge a bit on some back issues. I've been reading plot summaries of Steve Englehart's Captain America run over at the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe, so I figured, why not?

Unfortunately, Phantom didn't have issues #153-156 (Captain America vs. Captain America), and they only had a few spotty issues between #165 and #175 (where Cap fights the Secret Empire and discovers just much things have changed since his time). But they did have these issues, where Steve Rogers abandons the identity of Captain America because he's not sure he believes in America any more.

Reading these issues, I was surprised how inessential issues #177-182 were. It's very tempting to just jump from this...

Captain America and the Falcon #176, p. 171

...to this..

Captain America and the Falcon #183, p. 172

After all, that's the meat of the story, right? Steve Rogers decides he can't be Captain America any more, then realizes he's made a mistake and climbs back into the costume? Well sure — but that would make for a very short story. So Englehart drags things out for eight months. He gives us three adventures for an uncostumed Cap. He gives us three schlubs who take up the mantle of Captain America and fail — each failure worse than the last.3 He gives us scenes where Captain America's supporting cast adjust to life without him, and scenes where Steve Rogers discovering that life as a non-star-spangled sentinel isn't any easier.

But the problem is none of that filler material is any good. Lucifer is one of Marvel's least-interesting villains, and his fight against the Falcon feels like a fill-in issue. Hawkeye's attempt to bludgeon Cap out of his inaction is a hoary old Marvel cliché. And the Serpent Squad's plan to raise Lemuria off the ocean floor is just unbelievably bizarre — as far as I can tell, they don't have a real reason, other than just wanting to be villanous. We even get to see Viper II (Madame Hydra) kill the Viper (Jordan Stryke) — a tragedy, since the original was a much more interesting character. The character subplots are tedious, and the scenes with the replacement Captain Americas are so ham-handed that it's immediately obvious where Englehart is going with the story.

So what we're left with is a story with a memorable beginning and a stirring ending, and a completely forgettable middle. Unfortunately, it's in the middle that a story lives or dies — had I been reading Captain America in 19744 I'd have dropped the series before the conclusion to this story.

One Last Word: I think Cap's stirring speech from issue #183 is still stirring today. Cap recognizes that his current approach to America's troubles — namely, sitting around and whining about them in the merry Marvel manner — is counterproductive, and vows that in the future he'll be a more active participant in shaping America's destiny. I can think of some Democrats who desperately need to get that message.

The "acting" on Sal Buscema's Cap is incredible. The first panel is a more-or-less standard Cap pose — except his shoulders are ever so slightly slumped and his head ever so slightly lowered. The second panel shows a several conflicting emotions — sadness, anguish, and even anger — all expertly conveyed by the set of Cap's jaws and the shading on his temples. And finally, those eyes — those very, very tired eyes. These three panels combine to create an effective portrait of a man with great reserve making a decision he isn't too proud of.

There's some nice storytelling by Frank Robbins. Tight zooms, shrinking panels, and a gradually warming color scheme all help to heighten Cap's intensity. The final pan takes you over to Roscoe's body wearing the Captain America costume, reminding you of both Cap's responsibilities and his failures and at the same time breaking you out of Cap's inner monologue and returning you to the real world. These days, this scene would be probably be done as a single splash of Cap ranting in front of an American flag; there'd be nothing to linger on, and you'd forget it ten seconds later.

Why three times? Because twice isn't enough to drive the point home, and four times is belaboring the point. The triad is a recurring motif in all forms of art, because it's stable without being regular.

Which is unlikely, since I was being conceived when the last issue was on the newsstands.

For anyone who's interested, these issues also feature the first appearance of Roxxon president Hugh Jones and his first contact with the Serpent Crown. So at least they're historical.

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You Can Judge A Book By Its Cover

I don't comment on Previews for a few reasons — mostly because I find it completely useless. What can you say about page after mind-numbing page of postage-stamp sized covers and deliberately vague solicitation copy? Not much, so why waste my time writing about comics I've never seen that might be good? Then I was flipping through the latest Marvel Previews and this odd pairing caught my eye...

Marvel Previews #18, p. 6-7

That's the cover for Amazing Fantasy #7 up there on the left. It's not a great cover — the composition is a little on the simple side, and the foreground doesn't "pop" off the background (though that wouldn't be a problem if the background were a little less cluttered) — but it's certainly an enticing cover. If I saw that on the racks, I'd certainly consider picking it up.

And then I'd be totally flabbergasted by the interiors, done by Leonard Kirk in a completely different style.

Marvel's editorial policy is to use generic pin-up images for covers — that way, they can be re-used over and over again on promotional posters, t-shirts, etc. That's not necessarily a bad idea — however, after a couple years the covers have been getting repetitive (every third comic seems to have the same cover), and I'd rather have a cover that gives me at least a vague idea of what I'll can find inside.1 No, the real problem lies in the execution of the policy.

Many of the covers are done in a completely different style from the contents. The cover to Amazing Fantasy #7 has a mangaesque feel to it — that's about as far as you can get from Leonard Kirk's style, which is as close to a Marvel house style as one gets these days. Someone who likes the cover is going to be disappointed by Kirk's more traditional style, and someone who likes Leonard Kirk is going to be turned off by the cover. That's just bad marketing. What's the solution? Well, artists could do their own covers — though some artists just don't have the knack for doing covers.2 At the very least, the cover artist and the interior artist should have similar styles.

Of course, in the final analysis, the most important thing is about the cover is that it's on the same wavelength as the rest of the comic — Dave McKean's covers for Sandman obviously weren't done in the same style as the contents, but were perfectly in tune with Neil Gaiman's vision.

Final Note to Marvel: If that's the best page of sample artwork you can find from Amazing Fantasy #7, then the comic is already in serious trouble.

The last few issues of She-Hulk have done a good job of being attractive, re-usable pin-up art while still giving you a good idea of what's going on inside. Both of them feature Titania pounding the snot out of the She-Hulk, and sure enough, that's what the contents feature too.

Kirby, for instance, is a great comic artist, but his covers are usually pretty lackluster. It's not that he couldn't bang out a great cover — in fact, in the mid-'70s he did some great covers for other people's comics. But the covers he did for his own comics were usually afterthoughts, and it shows.

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Avengers Disassembled

"Breakout!" Part 1

Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Penciled by David Finch
Inked by Danny Miki
Colored by Frank D'Armata
Lettered by Comicraft (Albert Deschene)

"Six months"1 after the Avengers disband, a new team assembles to stop Electro from breaking an army of supervillains out of the Raft.2

Actually, that's a pretty generous plot summary — at the end of the issue the breakout has just begun and most of the team members aren't even in costume yet. It's a bit too slowly paced for my tastes, especially as the issue is devoted entirely to the mechanical aspects of getting the key players into the same place at the same time. I might have been a bit more forgiving if there was an awesome action sequence or some poignant character moments, but right now this seems like a pretty poor use of 22 pages.

David Finch's storytelling is better suited to the slow pace of this story than to the chaotic carnage he's drawn of late. He's not exactly brilliant — but he does a decent job of establishing the sequence of events and guiding your eye from one panel to the next. On the other hand, this is all building to a huge fight scene, and given what "Avengers Disassembled" looked like, I'm pretty sure that it's going to look like crap.

What really jumped out at me, though, was this sequence from page 13...

New Avengers #1, p. 13

The intended sequence of events is pretty simple — Spidey needs to find a way out to the Raft, spots a helicopter, and hitches a ride.4 Unfortunately, the helicopter is in the wrong panel. As it stands now, the presence of the helicopter in the first panel makes this scene somewhat confusing — it's not unreadable, but certainly more than a tad disjointed.

But you know what? This isn't Finch's problem. The mistake might be in his pencils, but it managed to slip by the inker, colorist, letterer, and four editors. It's a trivial fix, too — the panels are virtually identical, so swapping them in Photoshop would take maybe a minute. In the last few years, Marvel has let all sorts of suspicious storytelling slide — remember the consider the confusing rooftop sequence from Marvel Knights Spider-Man #9.5 Do the editors even read their own comics anymore? I'm not saying we need to go back to the bad old days of Jim Shooter scribbling over originals with a red pen, but it would be nice to have someone in editorial working with the artists to help improve their storytelling.

1. You know, when DC killed off Superman and crippled Batman, they actually went away for months. When Marvel kills off Spider-Man or the Avengers they're gone for a matter of weeks. Note to Marvel editors — nothing creates the illusion of time passing better than actual time passing.

2. Part of me wonders how this army of losers is going to threaten anyone. Take away the U-Foes and Electro, and you're left with what? Crossbones, Jigsaw, Shockwave, the Armadillo, Vermin, the Scarecrow, Typhoid Mary and the Controller? These guys might pose a threat to Spider-Man, Cage, or Daredevil in single combat — but Iron Man and Sentry should have these guys vaporized in a matter of seconds.2 Then again, the intent is obviously to distract the heroes with cannon fodder while Electro breaks out the Purple Man, so you're not exactly supposed to buy this group as the new masters of evil...

3. For that matter, I wonder why some of these guys are on the Raft to begin with. Jigsaw, Crossbones, Shockwave and the Scarecrow don't really have any powers — take away their gear and they're just normal people (well, except for Jigsaw, who can't turn his head). But I guess it's cooler to just let them have their costumes in lock-up.

4. It's not related to the art, but I should probably mention that Spidey hitching a ride on a helicopter isn't a new idea. Heck, he did it thirty years ago in Howard the Duck #1, where it was played for laughs.

5. For those of youx who didn't buy it, there's a sequence in Marvel Knights Spider-Man #9 where you're supposed to think that Spidey's been killed by the new Venom, only to discover that it's an innocent bystander wearing a store-bought Spider-Man costume. Unfortunately, the way the scene is drawn the sequence of events is extremely confusing — and the lettering quite clearly has the "fake" Spider-Man speaking the real Spidey's dialogue. Those two or three pages desperately needed to be rewritten and redrawn — or at the very least have the tails erased off of a few word balloons — and yet Marvel editorial apparently didn't touch them at all.

Three months after their final battle with the Scarlet Witch, the Avengers decide to disband...

There's no real reason that this couldn't have been Avengers #504 — except that by making it a special, Marvel can pass off less story for mor money. And such a slight story it is — there's nothing here that couldn't have been accomlished in a fraction of the space. Still, it's nice that they at least tried to provide a sense of closure, even though that was ruined by the release New Avengers #1 only two weeks later.

There's no point in even discussing the art — half of the book consists of pin-ups, and other half was drawn by six separate artists. The longest individual contribution to the book is George Perez, who cranks out six pages1, including a double-page splash. There's no consistency in the storytelling or character designs at all. It makes me long for the days of someone like Joe Sinnot, who could have inked the entire book in his sleep and given it some sort of visual unity.

Even the pin-ups are of highly variable quality. Most are well-drawn, but nothing spectacular. Particularly galling is Mike Avon Oeming's contribution — I know he's got a simple style, but his two-page spread is so pared down it looks like a phone pad doodle blown up 1000%. It's not even all that great compositionally — everything is just a hair too far to the right, and the figures are stiffly posed to be exciting.

I must confess a certain soft spot for Jim Cheung's depiction of the Siege of Avengers Mansion, if only because he has Cap wearing some sort of futuristic chain mail made out of hexagons. Now there's a man ahead of his time. The rest of the picture's a mess — a chaotic battle scene with no depth, and no pop provided by flat inking and lackluster coloring.

Six of the ugliest pages he's ever drawn, though I suspect most of that is due to inker Mike Perkins, who doesn't mesh with Perez's style.

I bought the four-part "Avengers Disassembled" with the hopes that it might provide some inspiration for the Vigilants storyline over in the Japanese Beetle. No such luck. All I really have to show for my purchase is a burning hole in my wallet where $17.25 used to be.

For those of you who've been living in a spiderhole for the last six months, "Avengers Disassembled" is a simple story where the Scarlet Witch goes nuts and uses her hex powers to destroy the Avengers by pitting them against wave after wave of their deadliest foes. This is a classic superhero premise — good guy goes bad — but the writing is mediocre at best, and the art is horrible.

I understand that Brian Michael Bendis is the superstar writer du jour, though I'm not familiar with his work (mostly because he writes mainstream superhero comics). At first glance, "Avengers Disassembled" seems innocuous enough. There aren't any gaping plot holes, red herrings, or dangling plot threads, and the dialogue is readable.

The actual pacing of the story is horrible, though. The first issue is an action-packed thrill ride that leaves you gasping for more. But nothing of note happens in the second issue, and the third and fourth issues are structured around single events. It's certainly an interesting way to structure a story — typically, things pick up towards the end instead of trailing off. Unfortunately, Bendis isn't clever enough to pull it off.

He doesn't seem to have a good grasp on the characters, either. They all speak with the same voice, and they don't show any spark of personality. Now, admittedly, this is an event-driven book, not a character driven book, and the Scarlet Witch is messing with their minds anyway. Furthermore, the cast is huge — almost everyone who's been an Avenger shows up. Still, at the very least Bendis could have focused on a core group of characters with more developed personalities.

As uninspiring as the writing is, it's not helped by the art, which is even worse. Here's a sequence from Avengers #502, featuring the death of Hawkeye.

Avengers #502, p. 171

Gah. Where to begin? First, let's salute penciler David Finch for bucking the trend. This isn't a comic filled with big, splashy panels that don't move the story along — it's a comic filled with tiny, crabbed panels that don't move the story along. Finch's panel-to-panel storytelling is terrible — actions aren't flowing across the gutters, and key plot points are given the same weight as transitional events. There's also no sense of the environment this scene takes place in — this is just a random sequence of pictures that fails to add up to a whole.

Finch's art is also just plain ugly. It's packed with non-descriptive detail, as if showing us every chain of Captain America's armor or every muscle of Hawkeye's abs is somehow a mark of quality. The character designs are inconsistent — the women don't have the same face from panel to panel, and all the men seem to have the same face.2 Of course, let's give credit where credit is due — some of this could be the fault of inker Danny Miki. He's certainly responsible for that lumpy, solid smoke on the second page and the bizarre, non-descriptive feathering on everyone's muscles.

For that matter, let's spread some blame to colorist Frank D'Armata, who gives the entire issue a weird burgundy sheen. It's supposed to make the issue seem creepy, but it's so overdone that it's oppressive. Dr. Strange's eventual appearance is a great relief — he's the only source of cool colors in the issue.

It's sad, because "Avengers Disassembled" also features the work of a much better artist — namely, Oliver Coipel, who pencils some of the flashback sequences in issue #503.

Avengers #503, p. 1-2

Coipel is the anti-Finch. The aspect-to-aspect transitions slowly draw you into the environment, turning a dull talking-heads sequence into exquisitely-timed banter. The characters have distinctive appearances and show a lot of personality (especially the Wasp, though I'm also tickled by the way he makes Hawkeye look like a big dumb moron). There's no unnecessary detail, and yet the page doesn't feel empty. So I have to ask — why does Finch get the regular gig, while Coipel's reduced to penciling flashbacks?

For those of you wondering about the quality of this scan, well, let me say that this particular issue of Avengers has seen a lot of abuse. It's been rolled up and used to swat flies, pressed flat and used as a coaster, had phone numbers jotted down on its pages, and so on. Yeah, I loved Avengers #502 that much.

I love the look Captain America's got in panel seven — he looks like a big, constipated baby.

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Kirby's Late Period

"Dino-Riders"/"The Witch and the Warp"

Written and drawn by Jack Kirby
Inked and lettered by Mike Royer
Colored by Petra Goldberg

I've got absolutely nothing to say about these issues — or at least their contents. But the cover to Devil Dinosaur #9 is inked by John Byrne, and has the distinction of being the ugliest cover I've ever seen on a Kirby comic...

Devil Dinosaur #9

Byrne's just a bad mis-match for Kirby at this point in his career — he's got a love of detail that just doesn't mesh well with Kirby's bold visuals. Devil looks lumpy instead of scaly, and it looks like Byrne spent more time inking the explosion than any of the figures. On the other hand, you can't pin the failure of this cover on Byrne alone — it's terribly uninspired and poorly composed. The King was never particularly strong at composing covers, and this is probably one of his all-time worst compositions.

Starting next week, some slightly more topical comic reviews. As in, ones that are of 5 year old comics instead of 25 year old comics.

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Kirby's Late Period

I didn't exactly plan on taking two weeks off from this blog, but events at work and home somehow gobbled up all my free time. So finally, here's part two of my thoughts on Devil Dinosaur #4-7.

"Object from the Sky"/"Journey to the Center of the Ants!"/"Eev!"/"Demon-Tree!"

Written and drawn by Jack Kirby
Inked and lettered by Mike Royer
Colored by Petra Goldberg and George Roussos

There are two stories running through Devil Dinosaur #4-7. The first is the alien invasion storyline I discussed last time. The other half is a painfully awful retelling of the Fall of Man.

The structure of the story is pretty simple. In issue #6, Stone-Hand and White-Hair rescue a wild woman named Eev from the giant anthill. At the end of that issue, the three of them encounter the remnants of the alien supercomputer — the "Demon-Tree." In issue #7, they form an alliance with the Demon-Tree to drive away Devil, but the Tree proves to be a bit clingy and imprisons the three of them in a garden paradise under an impenetrable dome.

It's a strange situation. Stone-Hand and White-Hair are upset and immediately begin looking for escape. Eev, on the other hand, rightly points out that the Tree hasn't harmed them and is providing for all their needs. Unfortunately, this is when the Biblical correspondences begin to fall apart — since the Demon-Tree is God and Satan rolled into one, the chief dynamic of the story is ruined and Eev's role becomes especially confused.

Eventually, Stone-Hand and Eev wake up to find that White-Hair has passed away. Stone-Hand becomes convinced that the Tree has reneged on its promise to make them safe, though Eev points out that White-Hair was a feeble old man who's time had passed and he was bound to die anyway. But Stone-Hand won't listen, and attacks the Tree, causing it to explode. Then Devil and Moon-Boy wander by, break the "impenetrable" dome, and free Stone-Hand and Eev who go off to become the mythical ancestors of all mankind.

Reading the dialogue, it seems that kirby realized his Biblical allegory was falling apart and tried to make it a story about false security. Unfortunately, it doesn't pan out — none of the characters has a clear motivation for their actions, things just happen. If there's any saving grace to the storyline, it's the character of Eev...

Devil Dinosaur #6, p. 16

You've got to give Eev this — she's got spirit. And I like a girl with spirit. Even if she is a crazy ape-girl with a weird prehistoric beehive and green fur. Plus, she's pretty sexy for a Kirby girl, which both excites and disturbs me to no end. She's a spirited, independent woman with more common sense than any of the male Small-Folk.

Unfortunately, in the final part of the story, Eev is effectibly a completely different character. She's completely unable to counter Stone-Hand and his indiotic actions, and on the final page she goes off with him because the plot demands it and not because they have any particular chemistry. Which is especially strange, because it's quite clear in that panel above that Stone-Hand is trying to rape her. Her character is quite effectively ruined just so Kirby can meet the needs of the plot, which is unfortunate.

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Kirby's Late Period

"Object from the Sky"/"Journey to the Center of the Ants!"/"Eev!"/"Demon-Tree!"

Written and drawn by Jack Kirby
Inked and lettered by Mike Royer
Colored by Petra Goldberg and George Roussos

In Devil Dinosaur #4 the Valley of Flame is invaded by aliens intent on killing all the dinosaurs and protohumans. Moon Boy and Devil Dinosaur lead the resistance against the invaders, ultimately destroying them in issue #6 (though they have to deal with a stray survivor in #7). Kirby's inclusion of aliens in a prehistoric setting is utterly baffling — he's only four issues into the series and he's already exhausted all the dramatic possibilities of 65,000,000 B.C.? At the same time, it's perfectly in tune with Kirby's existing sensibilities: he has a story to tell, and since he's working on Devil Dinosaur it's going to be a Devil Dinosaur story, dammit!

The structure of these issues really highlights the deficiencies of Kirby's writing. Moon Boy is captured about halfway through issue #3, which forces Kirby to invent some new characters to hang around with Devil. At the same time, Moon Boy's capture serves no narrative purpose; the other characters could care less about rescuing him, and the segments of the stories told from his vantage point don't reveal anything of interest about the aliens. Moon Boy's replacements are much more interesting characters, though completely extraneous to Devil's plot thread.

Perhaps the most unforgiveable offense is that the defeat of the aliens comes out of nowhere: Devil destroys them with a swarm of giant ants that hadn't been seen before the story and haven't been seen since. Why the giant ants are a threat to aliens but stampeding herds of dinosaurs aren't, I have no idea...

Overall, this is a terrible story with a meandering plot that could have benefitted from a more rigorous story structure. Oh well. At least the aliens have a neat look...

Devil Dinosaur #5, p. 20

These guys are some of the neatest things to come out of Kirby's late period drawing style. They're composed entirely of very basic geometric shapes, squiggly blobs of ink and a few lines. And yet, they possess a monumental solidity and presence that makes them leap right off the page. And even better, they're fun to draw — my sketchbook is filled with page after page of doodles of these guys.

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Kirby's Late Period

"Devil Dinosaur!"/"Devil's War!"

Written and drawn by Jack Kirby
Inked and lettered by Mike Royer
Colored by Petra Goldberg

One of the things that amazes me about Kirby's late period is that he's consistently able to take a sure-fire hit and then fail with it. Consider Devil Dinosaur: who wouldn't want to read about a boy and his dinosaur in prehistoric times? It already sounds like a badly-animated Hanna Barbera cartoon or a spin-off from Land of the Lost. And yet poor Devil got cancelled after a mere nine issues. What gives?

Unfortunately, there's no clear-cut answer. Kirby's art from this era is so stylized that young comics fans, weaned on a steady diet of Neal Adams, Gil Kane and Ross Andru, found it tremendously off-putting. It's clear from looking at these comics that Kirby isn't wasting a lot of time on each page: Devil's anatomy is rarely consistent from panel to panel and even the storytelling is pedestrian and uninspired. Kirby's writing, never his strong suit, is seriously hampered by his lack of adequate planning and tin ear for dialogue. Perhaps the biggest sin, though, is that while Kirby has constructed a massive world in his imagination he rarely, he rarely bothers to try and explain it to the readers. (This last sin isn't unique to Kirby; many modern fantasy, sci-fi and comic book writers share it too.)

All of these factors combine to make Devil Dinosaur less than it could be. On the other hand, Kirby could still produce some great art when his heart was in the work. To wit...

Devil Dinosaur #2, p. 2-3

This splash is everything that the splash from 2001 #3 isn't. The composition is very basic and balanced: the massive figure of Devil dominates the top half of the composition while the Killer Folk and their trap cluster around the bottom of the page. The angry black slashes on Devil's form reinforce the direction of his movement, and the blacks on the bodies of the Killer Folk help draw your eye from one figure to the next, and the black lines of the rock radiate up and left from those prominent stakes. Details are clustered at the points of emphasis — Devil and the stakes — but even the contrast between them (Devil is slickly rendered while the stakes are crude and craggy) creates plenty of visual interest.

But what really steals the show is Petra Goldberg's superb coloring. The background is colored entirely in cool and neutral colors which recede from the viewer. Devil is a bright red, contrasting excellently with the pale cyan of the rocks beneath him and drawing your eye directly to him. The warm slash of sky in the ground behind him reinforces the direction of his movement, and the warm oranges on the stakes beneath him draw your eye to the oncoming danger.

I'd say Devil Dinosaur #2 is worth purchasing for this splash alone. A pity that the rest of the contents aren't up to snuff...

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Kirby's Late Period

Rather than complain about the color work on the last issue of 2001 I reviewed I figured it might be nice to actually show you what I mean...

This isn't a great coloring job, but it's better than what the page sported previously. The overall composition is one of complementary contrasts, with the yellow sky set off against the purple rocks. There's also a warm/cool contrast — Marak is the only "cool" area on the whole page — and a contrast of saturation, with Marak and the foreground figures being the most saturated areas of the composition. I've also eliminated some of the more jarring aspects of the previous color scheme (what kind of pelts are used to make green and magenta loincloths, anyway?).

However, the color can only help out so much. This composition is still way too chaotic. If I had to alter the drawing, I'd get rid of those two cavemen in the middle ground — they're superfluous and badly drawn, to boot — and lower the cliffs on page three to add more negative space under the flying figure.

The more I look at these pages the more I find to like. There's some great stuff here, but it's all buried in the background and overwhelmed by the aggressive ugliness of the foreground. The archer on the right hand page is well-posed and well-drawn, and the silhoutted warriors behind him have an imposing, sinister muscularity. The corpse behind Marak's right foot and just underneath the archer have a real pathos to them. And there are a lot of nice textures — the loincloth on the central figure, the rocks, and the hair of the man holding the tomahawk.. I even like the outstretched hand of the man being knocked by by the force of Marak's blow. It's a pity that these elements don't contribute to the overall look of the spread.

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Kirby's Late Period

"Marak!"/"Wheels of Death!"

Written and drawn by Jack Kirby
Inked and lettered by Mike Royer
Colored by George Roussos & Glynis Wein

One man's sense of destiny sparks a revolution in the early dawn of time! Is it an accident of history — or the plan of an alien intelligence? All we know is that somehwere, at some date in the distant past — someone rode the wheels of death!

2001 #3 starts off with a typical Kirby splash...

2001: A Space Odyssey #3, p. 2-3

Now that's chaos. If the drawing has a fault, however, it's that the composition is too chaotic — other than the airborne figure, there's really no unifying direction to the composition. Even the spotting of blacks doesn't help separate the picture planes. What could really help would be a better coloring job — by muting the colors on the background figures the foreground would come into much sharper focus.

In the distant past, a warlord named Marak encounters an inventor named Egel. Egel's latest discovery — bronze — would greatly assist Marak's conquest, and so Marak suggests they team up. Unsure, Egel consults the Monolith — and is surprised when it accepts Marak as well. Drawn into the world of the Monolith, Marak is given a vision of the far future and the fabled queen Jalessa..

Egel and Marak work tirelessly, creating numerous inventions such as armor, swords, and the wheel, and ultimately Marak's army marches through the gates of Jalessa's kingdom. Marak and Jalessa marry, and history is made (though I'm not exactly sure how).

In the future, Marak's descendant Herbert Marik is the military commander of a scientific outpost. When the outpost is struck by a meteor swarm, he sends the crew to safety and remains behind to meet his death. But the outpost's sensors detect the Monolith floating in the middle of the swarm, he goes out to investigate — and is sucked inside. There, the Monolith presents him with an idealized fantasy world — but Marik doesn't age and doesn't become a star child.

These issues mark Kirby's first departures from his 2001 formula. While the changes are a breath of fresh air, they actually wind up making the issue even more maddening. Because Marak's story is given so much space to breathe (27 pages) it seems strange that it's not really about a momentous development in humankind's past and it makes the Marik story (7 pages) seem even more rushed and incomplete. Marik's non-transformation actually makes a good point about great men — that many of them are not great on their own terms, but in how they inspire others — but it changes the end of the story from a climax to an anticlimax.

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Kirby's Late Period

"Vira the She-Demon!"

Written and drawn by Jack Kirby
Inked and lettered by Mike Royer
Colored by Janice Cohen

Are we the end of the line!? Are we the last stop in the journey of human evolution? The answer could be that the voyage is far from over! Each of us could be a stepping stone to the new seed!

More philosophical questions from the Jack Kirby — and once again, he doesn't even attempt to answer them. Kirby's second issue of 2001 hews to the formula established by the first issue, and is maddeningly muddled in many of the same ways.

"Vira the She-Demon!" starts off with a real bang, though it ends with a whimper. The first three pages introduce us to the voluptuous Vira, a starving cavewoman. She wanders into a "ritual cave" where she's confronted by angry cavement, but manages to drive them off with a flaming skull on a stick. Retreating from the angry males, Vira decides to consult Monolith. Its advice inspires Vira to dress up in a costume made of bones and use fear to dominate the other cavement. Kirby claims this is Earth's first government — though it seems more like a religion to me. Flash forward to the future...

2001: A Space Odyssey #2, p. 14

This is great storytelling. The bottom of the hut in the first panel lines up with the bottom of the hut in the second panel, which creates an immediate connection between the two (interestingly, you're usually told not to to line up objects this way). The food items in the second panel form a gentle arc that leads your eyes down to the next tier. These three panels form one continuous zoom which starts outside Vira's cottage and ends just inside her front door.

The flash-forward itself is another subtle piece of work. The color from the walls of Vira's hut continues over into the background of Vera's space ship, as do most of the dark areas. The cool color scheme of the first panel contrasts with the warm color scheme of the second panel, which reinforces the shift in tie and space. Again, note that Kirby stages the figures in similar but not exact poses, which implies a connection between them while drawing attention to their differences..

Anyway, we flash forward to the future, where we meet astronaut Vera Gentry. Vera spouts some nonsensical feminist garbage1, is harrassed by UFOs, and chased by aliens into a cave where she, well, falls into the Monolith. You will recall that the exact same thing happened in the first issue. It's just as unsatisfying here.

2001: A Space Odyssey #2, p. 22

I like these two panels, though you can pretty much toss the rest of the page. The first panel is a nice composition — the repeated vertical lines of the shadow, the cave edge, and the Monolith lead your eyes to the right. However, I have to wonder why Kirby reverses Vera's position relative to the reader from panel one to panel two, though — I think this might work better if she were falling to the right instead of to the left.

That second panel, by the way, is a perfect example of the sort of crap that Kirby pull off that less experience cartoonists struggle with. You'll note that none of those limbs look like they belong to the same figure — her left hand is bigger than her right hand, even though it's further away, and her right legs seems to have completely separated from her body. And yet, it all looks okay until you spend far too long dissecting it, because Kirby's experience allows him to take shortcuts. Of course, Janice Cohen's colors help quite a big, with the waves of coruscating energy providing a nice ground for the figure to rise out of (or fall into). The yellowing of the newsprint has helped a bit here — if you sharpen the image to make the paper whiter then the figure seems much less coherent.)

Anyway, once she falls through the Monolith, Vera is transformed into a space baby and goes off to explore the universe. You know, the usual.

This issue really starts to show the cracks in the formula Kirby developed for 2001. The caveman stories are filled with fascinating ideas which aren't explored in nearly enough detail. The astronaut stories are rushed and nonsensical, with no clear connection to the caveman stories.

Again, you have to wonder how much to blame Kirby for all this. The end of 2001 the movie is maddeningly vague as well. And it probably should be — how can you even attempt to explain that sort of quantum leap to someone who hasn't already made the transition? On the other hand, the film also had a definite story with a beginning, middle and end, which Kirby's spaceman tales do not. It's an interesting reversal from the film, if ultimately an unsatisfying one.

Kirby also anthropomorphizes the Monolith to a dangerous extent. It's less of a mysterious force and more of an obvious plot device. When the Monolith "speaks" it dispels all ambiguity about its role in human evolution (though there's still some ambiguity remaining about its goals). But it seems less like an inscrutable alien artifact and more like a caveman agony aunt.

On the other hand, this is still leagues better than 2001 #3-4, which I'll get to tomorrow...

Vera's exact comment is, "NASA must be recruiting male chauvinist staffers. They would pick a female for this U.F.O. assignment!" While this creates a clear connection between Vera and Vira (they're both being held down by men), I'm not sure why Vera thinks her superiors are sexist here. But I digress.

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Kirby's Late Period

"Beast-Killer!"

Written and drawn by Jack Kirby
Inked and lettered by Mike Royer
Colored by George Roussos

Where are we going? Somewhere in the dawn of time we began — somehow, in these perilous times we keep moving on — and some time in the future, something will happen to change us!

These words open Jack Kirby's 2001: A Space Odyssey and set the stage for what's to come. Kirby asks some big questions there, and yet delivers a series that fails to answer them in any meaningful manner. It's probably not helped that the title forces you to draw comparisons to one of the greatest films of all time. As you may have guessed, 2001 is "based on concepts from the MGM/Stanley Kubrick production." Most notably, Kirby explores the film's fascination with man's past and future evolution and creates a nifty story structure based on the movie's iconic flash-forward cut.

2001 #1 is evenly split into two parts — one taking place in the distant past, and the other taking place in the far future. The issue opens with scenes of our caveman ancestors as they hunt for his food. However, their inability to catch dinner leads one brave "neo-man" to consult the Monolith, which inspires him to invent the spear.

If the above summary makes this story seem simplistic, it's only because the story is simplistic. Perhaps too simplistic. Very little happens over the course of the issue, and the key events are crammed into two or three pages, which undercuts their impact. The tone of the story isn't helped by the narration, which belabors every plot point in the purplest of prose. The King would hae been better off following Kubrick's lead — in the film, the silence of the prehistoric scenes helped enhance the mood and create a sense of enigmatic foreboding. As it stands, the overwritten captions only call undue attention to the issues they don't address — the nature of the Monolith and the causes of evolution and inspiration.

As the neo-man launches his spear, we flash-forward several million years to astronaut Woodrow Decker. 2001 has been relatively uninspired until now, but the transition between the past and future is particularly striking...

2001: A Space Odyssey #1, p. 15

This is some of Kirby's greatest storytelling.

In the first panel, your eye is drawn right to the neo-man because he's sitting right in the darkest area of the page. At the same time, the fleeing procameli and the jagged rocks draw your eyes rightward into the second panel. The only discordant note is the procamelus in the lower left, who is staring right at the reader. Had Kirby tilted his head a few degrees to the left he'd have been far less of a distraction.

In the second panel, the dark areas along the left-hand border are placed against empty areas on the right-hand border of the first panel, which helps separate the two panels while at the same time creating a subtle bridge between them. Your eye is drawn into the negative space between the tip of the neo-man's spear and his left arm, and down the arm to the intense look of his face. The neo-man's pose arrests the rightward motion of your eye bouncing it down and to the left into the third panel.

You enter the third panel from the upper right, and your eye immediately zoooms down the shaft of the neo-man's spear and then slingshot right into the fourth panel by the zip lines representing the motion of the neo-man's arm. This is probably the weakest panel on the page, mostly because of the deficiencies in the figure drawing.

By the fourth panel, we've reached the future. What Kirby does here is pretty clever — Decker's pose echoes, but does not duplicate, the pose of the neo-man, implying that their situations are analgous but not exactly so. A weaker artist would have used the same pose for both figures, which whould have made the composition far too stiff and rendered the transition between the third and fouth panels less meaningful. The busy details of this panel also contrast with the simplicity of the third panel, helping to strengthen shift of time and place. If I had to change anything, I'd alter the magenta of the nebulae in the background so that they matched the red cloud behind the neo-man in the third panel.

Note that we flash forward to the future before the spear hits its target. That's a very clever move — if we'd seen the neo-man get his first kill, that would have provided a sense of closure to his story and made the future scenes seem like a tacked-on epilogue.

Anyway, in the future, astronaut Woodrow Decker winds up shipwrecked no an alien world, gets chased through alien ruins by a tentacle monster, and falls down a hole into the Monolith.

If anything, this part of the story is even more unsatisfying than the first half. The neo-man was questing for knowledge, trying to open his boundaries, and the Monolith represented some mysterious, unknownable phase in his evolution. Decker, on the other hand, doesn't do anything except run. There aren't even any thematic ties between the two halves of the story, except for the presence of the Monolith.

Of course, one of the reasons that the future seems so rushed is that it also has to include Decker's transformation by the Monolith...

2001: A Space Odyssey #1, p. 26

At first glance, this page seems amazing. However, you soon realize that Kirby's used his bag of tricks to cover up some uninspired drawing. Decker's poses throughout the page are extremely stiff, the creature in panel three lacks any sort of dimensionality, and the composition of panel number four is so simplistic that it draws attention to the crude drawing. The storytelling is also disjointed — perhaps appropriate for such a disorienting experience, but still somehow unsatisfactory. Still, that is one awesome-looking planet in the second panel.

After his passage through the Monolith, Decker is transformed into a space baby and flies off into the unbounded cosmos. No explanation is given, and perhaps one shouldn't be expected — after all, isn't the next stage of our evolution ultimately unknowable?

Which is fine and dandy, except that prologue promised answers to that very question — or at least a careful consideration of it. The book doesn't deliver either, and as a result can't be considered more than an interesting curiosity.